Willi Fischer (lawyer)

Willi Fischer (* 1951 ) is a Swiss lawyer, university professor and non-fiction author. His areas of expertise and specializations include contract and liability law, private insurance law, corporate law, matrimonial property and inheritance law, drafting contracts, and construction and planning law.

Life

Career

Fischer experienced his childhood as the son of the married couple Emma Kern and Hans Fischer on a farm in Schleitheim , a village in the canton of Schaffhausen . After attending the local primary and secondary school, Willi Fischer began a commercial apprenticeship in 1967, which he completed in 1970 and immediately began preparing for the federal Matura . Fischer began studying law and history in 1973 at the University of Zurich. He received his licentiate in 1978, whereupon he immediately took up his position as an assistant at the Institute for International Private Law at the University of Zurich under Max Keller the following year . In 1983 Willi Fischer became senior assistant at the law department of the University of Zurich. His dissertation “The direct and indirect damage in sales law. A dogmatic investigation with special consideration of the history of development and the function of the guarantee institutes ”received the rating“ summa cum laude ”in 1984. During his assistant and senior assistant time, which lasted until 1993, Willi Fischer took on various teaching activities. He taught contract and liability law and international private law at the University of Zurich on the one hand and at the University of St. Gallen on the law of obligations and corporate law on the other. Fischer taught in Zurich until 2006 and in St.Gallen until 2016.

At the same time as his teaching activity, Willi Fischer took up the position of head of the specialist department for corporate and tax law in 2005. At the same time, Willi Fischer became a member of the executive board of the Business and Law department at the School of Management and Law (SML / ZHAW ). Fischer lectured at the SML in private business law with special attention to general contract and liability law as well as company law and contract drafting.

During his academic career, Willi Fischer was admitted to the bar of the canton of Schaffhausen in 1984 and from then on also worked as a lawyer. This double function allowed Willi Fischer to put his scientific thinking and writing into practice in a profitable way. He was the first lawyer to receive funding from the federal funding organization “Commission for Technology and Innovation” (KTI), and to an extraordinary extent. This resulted in an electronic risk management tool for calculating liability risks combined with specific instructions for avoiding these risks. This new type of module was based on the findings from a commentary on all Swiss liability provisions that he had designed and published. In this work he himself comments on the central norms of Art. 41–61 OR. In addition to further legal commentaries and works on important topics of liability law and contract law, Willi Fischer developed a completely new representation of company law in 2014 and consequently published the “Handbook on Swiss Company Law”, which was the best-selling non-fiction legal book in the same year. In 2016 he published the five-volume work "The 100 most important model lawsuits" with two co-editors.

In August 2016, Willi Fischer retired and was honored with the commemorative publication "Without any liability - contributions to Swiss liability and obligation law" on his 65th birthday, in which well-known domestic and foreign authors honor him. However, Fischer has not fully retired, he continues to work as a lawyer and now teaches as a lecturer at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. Willi Fischer now devotes himself more to his non-legal interests such as literature and painting.

Mayor

In 1993, Willi Fischer made himself available as a candidate for the office of mayor. He believed that if you had the ability to do something, you had to do something for the public. He held this office for almost 13 years and was re-elected twice by the Schleitheim electorate

Private

Willi Fischer is married and has three children.

Works (selection)

Comments

• Commentary on Art. 41-61 OR (revision), in: Kren Kostkiewicz Jolanta / Wolf Stephan / Amstutz Marc / Fankhauser Roland (ed.), OR Commentary, Swiss Code of Obligations, 2nd edition, Zurich 2009 (with the assistance of Daniel Brugger ) and 3rd edition, Zurich 2016, 123 pages (with the collaboration of Anna Böhme, Fabian Gähwiler and Thomas Tanyeli).
• Preliminary remarks and comments on Art. 41-61 OR (without Art. 59a OR), in: Fischer Willi / Luterbacher Thierry (ed.), Liability Commentary, Commentary on Swiss Liability Regulations, Zurich / St.Gallen 2016, pp. 49–421 , along with:
  • Thierry Urwyler: Art. 42 OR;
  • Anna Böhme: Articles 43, 44 and 56 OR;
  • Fabian Gähwiler: Articles 45 and 46 OR;
  • Marc'Antonio Iten: Art. 50, 51, 55, 58–61 OR (without Art. 59a OR).

Monographs, treatises and essays

• Legal instruments of succession planning, in: Sigg Anita / Brunner Hans / Hofmann Roland (eds.), Corporate succession, advice, management, solution concept, Zurich 2013, pp. 175–195 (together with Anna Böhme).
• Non-contractual liability for shock damage to third parties. A contribution to the dogmatic analysis of the so-called long-range damage, Zurich 1988, XVIII and 69 pages.
• The direct and indirect damage in sales law. A dogmatic investigation with special consideration of the history of origin and the function of the guarantee institutes, Diss. Zurich 1985, XXXVI and 303 pages (and 59 pages appendix).
• Third party liability for false voluntary information. A comparative law study with regard to the justification and requirements of liability based on the German and Swiss supreme court case law, in: ZV glRWiss 83 (1984), pp. 1–31.
• Contract drafting and contract management, introduction to kautelarjurisprudenz, general part, Zurich / Basel / Geneva / 2010, XXV and 111 pages (together with Franziska Brägger, with the collaboration of Anna Böhme, Daniel Brugger and Thomas Tanyeli).
• The property management contract, in AJP 9 (2000), pp. 397–412.
• The description of the service and the various rights and obligations in the context of a service contract, in: AJP 6 (1997) pp. 256 - 268.

Co-editorships

• The 100 most important model lawsuits , Zurich / Basel / Geneva 2016 (together with Fabiana Theus Simoni and Dieter Gessler; with the collaboration of Sara Mammana), published in five volumes:
  • Volume I: Annotated Model Actions on Contract and Liability Law, LXII and 401 pages.
  • Volume II: Annotated Model Lawsuits on Company Law and Intellectual Property, LXII and 342 pages.
  • Volume III: Annotated model lawsuits on personal, inheritance and property law, LXII and 269 pages.
  • Volume IV: Annotated Model Lawsuits on Family Law, LXII and 276 pages.
  • Volume V: Annotated Model Actions on Foreclosure and Litigation Law, LXII and 138 pages
• Handbook of Swiss company law, sample documents, checklists and overviews for practice, Basel 2014, XXIX and 1398 pages (together with Helke Drenckhan, Michael Gwelessiani and Fabiana Theus Simoni).
• Liability commentary, comment on Swiss liability provisions, Zurich / St. Gallen 2016, LVI and 2875 pages (together with Thierry Luterbacher; with the collaboration of Anna Böhme, Fabian Gähwiler, Marc'Antonio Iten, David Tamer Talaat and Ivo Zuberbühler)

swell

1. ↑ Law firm Prof. Dr. Willi Fischer. Accessed December 18, 2019 (German). 
2. ↑ Without any liability: Contributions to Swiss liability and obligation law: Festschrift for Willi Fischer on his 65th birthday . Zurich / Basel / Geneva 2016, ISBN 978-3-7255-7310-3 .