Consumer goods purchase

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In the German law of obligations, the purchase of consumer goods is the sale of a movable object by an entrepreneur ( § 14 BGB) as a seller to a consumer ( § 13 BGB) as a buyer. This also applies to a contract which, in addition to the sale of a movable item, also includes the provision of a service by the entrepreneur (cf. § 474 Paragraph 1 Sentence 2 BGB).

General

As part of the modernization of the law of obligations, the provisions have been inserted into the German Civil Code (BGB) with effect from January 1, 2002, in order to implement the European Union's Consumer Goods Directive (EG-RL 99/44) into national law on time.

The legal consequences of the purchase of consumer goods are initially that certain general regulations of the sales law do not apply. They are:

Another restriction concerns the seller's liability in the event of defects: When purchasing consumer goods, a contractual exclusion of liability is generally not permitted for both used and new items ( Section 476 (1) BGB). Only the buyer's claims for damages against the seller can be excluded or limited ( Section 476 (3) BGB). In practice, this is of particular importance when buying a used car privately from a commercial car dealer. The extensive warranty exclusion that was common in the past is no longer possible today.

In the case of the purchase of consumer goods, the limitation period for warranty claims cannot contractually be reduced to the disadvantage of the buyer to less than two years for new items and not to less than one year for used items ( Section 476 (2) BGB).

Finally, the consumer is more effectively before the law in relation to the commercial buyer that he basically according to § 477 BGB during a six months after handover of the purchased goods occurred lack not prove need, that the defect existed or created as part of the transfer of risk. Rather, the existence of the defect is legally presumed at the decisive point in time. The seller can try to shake this presumption by providing evidence to the contrary.

Extension of the reversal of the burden of proof

According to the case law of the Federal Court of Justice , the provision of Section 477 BGB (Section 476 BGB old version) only established a temporal presumption that a material defect that occurred within six months of the transfer of risk was already present at the time of the transfer of risk. In contrast, it has not previously applied to the question of whether there is a deficiency at all. If it was not possible to clarify that the damage that occurred was due to a quality of the purchased item contrary to the contract, this was previously at the expense of the buyer. So the buyer had to prove that there was a defect at all.

The 8th Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice, which is responsible for sales law among other things, has adapted the principles it had previously developed to Section 477 of the German Civil Code in favor of the buyer in order to match the considerations in the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) of June 4, 2015 in To bring in line.

The interpretation of Article 5 (3) of the Consumer Goods Sale Directive, which was implemented in national law by Section 477 of the German Civil Code (BGB), requires the scope of this reversal of the burden of proof regulation in favor of the consumer by way of a directive-compliant interpretation of Section 477 of the BGB expand in two ways.

This concerns first of all the requirements for the burden of presentation and proof of the buyer with regard to the occurrence of a material defect within six months after the transfer of risk, which is the prerequisite for the presumption of presumption of § 477 BGB. In contrast to the previous case law of the Senate on Section 477 of the German Civil Code (BGB), in the opinion of the Court of Justice the buyer does not have to prove the reason for the lack of conformity or the fact that it is attributable to the seller within the framework of Article 5 (3) of the Consumer Goods Sale Directive. Rather, he only has to demonstrate and prove that the purchased item does not meet the quality, performance and suitability standards of an item that he could reasonably expect to receive under the contract. In accordance with the guideline-compliant interpretation of Section 477 of the German Civil Code (BGB), the Senate now allows the presumption of conformity provided there to intervene if the buyer succeeds in proving that within six months of the transfer of risk, a defective condition (a "deficiency symptom") has emerged, which he assumes would have its cause in a circumstance attributable to the seller - whose liability would be based on a deviation from the quality owed. On the other hand, from now on the buyer does not have to explain and prove the cause of this condition, nor that this falls within the seller's area of ​​responsibility. As a result, the new jurisprudence will in all likelihood lead to sellers of used items (in particular used car dealers) having to be more accommodating in the event of disputes about defects and more likely to reverse purchase contracts. The alternative of expensive and risky legal proceedings has become even less attractive for sellers.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Press release No. 180/2016. Federal Court of Justice, October 12, 2016, accessed on October 13, 2013 .
  2. ↑ ECJ, judgment of June 4, 2015, Az .: C-497/13, NJW 2015, 2237 - Faber / Autobedrijf Hazet Ochten BV
  3. ↑ Editor beck-aktuell, Verlag CHBECK, October 12, 2016: on BGH, judgment of October 12, 2016 - VIII ZR 103/15. October 12, 2016, archived from the original on October 13, 2016 ; accessed on October 13, 2016 .
  4. ^ Nils von Bergner: Defects in vehicle purchase: BGH strengthens buyers' rights. October 12, 2016. Retrieved October 13, 2016 .