Reichseisenbahnfeldlokomotivenfall
The Reichseisenbahnfeldlokomotivenfall is a legal dispute that was decided in 1959 by the VII Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice .
facts
The subject of the dispute were seven light rail locomotives that were in service near Vilna in 1944 . These were loaded on the advance of the Red Army and misdirected to Silesia . There the locomotives were unloaded and parked, whereupon a consortium took possession of them on March 12, 1945 and had them loaded again by the railway maintenance department, who knew from a dispatch note who they belonged to. The locomotives were then to food transported there in August and September 1945 by the Reichsbahn sold .
The original owner of the locomotives therefore asked the Deutsche Bundesbahn, the legal successor to the Reichsbahn, to compensate for the damage it had suffered from the sale of the locomotives. The Bundesbahn denied this obligation to pay compensation and continued to raise the objection of the statute of limitations .
Legal issue
In particular, the court had to decide whether a claim by the plaintiff could be based on the rules on the owner-owner relationship , since other claims were already statute-barred. For this purpose, the Reichsbahn should not have had any ownership rights to the locomotives and should have sold them dishonestly . Since the transport of the locomotives to Essen was in the interest of the owner in order to bring them to safety from the advancing Red Army, the courts assessed him as a manager without a mandate . This grants a right of ownership and basically excludes the application of the rules on the owner-owner relationship. It therefore had to be clarified whether the right of ownership resulting from the management without an order still existed and, if not, whether the Reichsbahn then also acted as the dishonest owner of the sale.
decision
The lower regional court and higher regional court had dismissed the claim in principle. However , the Federal Court of Justice granted an appeal against it. As a justification, he developed the legal figure of the boom as an extension of the scope of the rules on the owner-owner relationship. This legal figure has central consequences:
- A right to possession expires if it only entitles third-party ownership, but the owner behaves like an owner . This is the case, for example, when he sells something that does not belong to him.
- This conversion of third-party property into owner-occupied property is to be regarded as a renewed establishment of ownership. Therefore, according to Section 990, Paragraph 1 of the German Civil Code (BGB), it is sufficient if the owner only considers himself to be entitled to own property through gross negligence . He does not have to know positively that he is not entitled to possession.
As a justification, the court referred to the fact that third-party and personal property are fundamentally different.
effect
The decision of the Federal Court of Justice was and is still controversial in jurisprudence . The main objection to it is that it contradicts the legal valuations and is based on an outdated doctrine of property. On the other hand, it is credited with the fact that those converting their property can actually be expected to reflect on their property rights.
Individual evidence
- ↑ BGHZ 31, 129 .
- ↑ Peter Bassenge , Palandt , 2012, before Section 987 Rn. 11.
- ↑ a b Christian Baldus , MüKo BGB, 2013 , § 990 Rn. 13.
