Case law

  • Case Details
    • National ID: III ZB 36/04
    • Member State: Germany
    • Common Name:link
    • Decision type: Other
    • Decision date: 24/02/2005
    • Court: BGH (Supreme court)
    • Subject:
    • Plaintiff:
    • Defendant:
    • Keywords:
  • Directive Articles
    Unfair Contract Terms Directive, Article 2
  • Headnote
    1. The founder of a business or freelance entity is regarded as a business upon concluding the founding charter and is henceforth no longer a beneficiary of consumer-protecting provisions.
  • Facts
    The applicant was an employed doctor in a hospital. She wanted to become a self-employed doctor for gynaecology and obstetrics. To this end, on 23rd April 2002 she acquired a share of the practice of Dr. K, who together with the respondent carried on a group practice. Furthermore, on 29th May 2002 she concluded a group practice contract with the respondent.
    In June 2003 the respondent cancelled the group practice contract with the applicant and sought payment of a settlement. The applicant was not prepared to do so. The respondent commenced arbitration proceedings as a result of this dispute. He supports his claim on the basis of § 28 of the group practice contract, according to which disputes arising out of the contract are to be exclusively determined according to arbitration proceedings and recourse to the ordinary courts is excluded. The applicant regards the arbitration procedure as impermissible. The arbitration clause in the group practice contract, she claims, is void. She contended that she, the applicant, was a consumer at the time the group practice contract was concluded. It was not therefore permissible to conclude an arbitration agreement – as here – in a contractual clause, but rather this must be in a special document with the parties’ handwritten signatures, which could relate solely to the arbitration procedure.
    The Oberlandesgericht (higher regional court) disallowed the application. The applicant’s appeal to the BGH (Bundesgerichtshof – Federal Supreme Court) was rejected as unfounded.
  • Legal issue
    The BGH proceeded from a notion of consumer as defined in Art. 2 lit. b Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Directive 93/13/EEC. Accordingly, a consumer within the meaning of § 1931 (5), 1st sentence ZPO (Zvilprozessordnung – Civil Procedure Rules) (as it then applied) in conjunction with § 13 BGB is a natural person who, in the context of a transaction which is the subject of dispute, is acting for a purpose which cannot be attributed to his business or self employed capacity.
    The BGH stated that business activity (§ 14 BGB) and not consumer activity (§ 1931 (5), 1st sentence ZPO in conjunction with § 13 BGB) exists even where the transaction which is the subject of the dispute is concluded in the course of founding a business or starting a self-employed professional activity. The decisive factor is the purpose of the conduct – to be determined objectively. The legislation does not refer to the presence or absence of business experience, but rather depends on whether the conduct can be attributed to the private or business-professional area. Transactions in the course of starting a business, e.g. the lease of business premises, the conclusion of a franchising contract or the purchase of a share in a freelance group practice are, according to objective circumstances, clearly directed at business activity. The founder of a business betakes himself in business activity, and in legal relations makes himself known as being henceforth subject to the law relating to businesses and for his part also avails himself of this.
    According to the view of the BGH the applicant was a founder of a business in the aforementioned sense and is thereby to be treated as a business. The parties have therefore, according to § 29 of the – already signed, written – group practice contract of 29th May 2002, made an arbitration agreement according to the correct prescribed form (§ 1029 (1), 2nd sentence, 2nd case, § 1031 ZPO), as the stricter requirements of form for the participation of consumers of § 1931 (5) ZPO find no application.
  • Decision

    Full text: Full text

  • Related Cases

    No results available

  • Legal Literature

    No results available

  • Result