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Memorial to the victims of the Germanwings crash in Le Vernet, France
Photo: AP/dpa
The survivors of the victims of the devastating Germanwings plane crash in 2015 have once again suffered defeat in a lawsuit for additional damages.
The Frankfurt Regional Court dismissed several lawsuits against Lufthansa on Thursday.
The judges argued in a similar way to the Essen Regional Court and, most recently, to the Hamm Higher Regional Court in April 2021.
Accordingly, the parent company Lufthansa was not responsible for the flight medical examinations of the crew.
Rather, the experts responsible for the investigations acted “in the exercise of a public office”.
»The aviation medical examinations are a core component of flight safety.
Ensuring the safety of air traffic is a state task that is carried out by the Federal Aviation Authority," the statement continued.
Only the state or the body that employed the doctors could therefore be held liable.
The Frankfurt judgment is not final, but could be challenged at the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court.
The survivors now want to sue the state
It is now finally clear that no one but the state was responsible for the airworthiness tests, plaintiff attorney Elmar Giemulla told the dpa news agency.
He announced lawsuits against the Federal Republic after the summer break.
Lufthansa had already paid the survivors ten thousand euros each.
Before the district court in Frankfurt it was now about further compensation for pain and suffering.
The bereaved each demanded 40,000 euros for the impairments they had suffered themselves, in some cases deducting the ten thousand euros already paid.
In addition, as heirs, they demanded 25,000 euros per death for the fear of death suffered by their relatives in the minutes before the crash.
According to the investigation, on March 24, 2015, the co-pilot, who used to suffer from depression, intentionally steered an Airbus of the Lufthansa subsidiary Germanwings into a mountain in the French Alps.
All 150 occupants were killed, many of whom came from North Rhine-Westphalia.
The plaintiffs argue that the disaster could have been avoided had the co-pilot's investigations been taken more closely.
No criminal consequences in France
The trial at the Lufthansa place of jurisdiction in Frankfurt had become necessary because, for formal reasons, not all those affected could sue in North Rhine-Westphalia.
In France, in March, the judiciary dropped a case of negligent homicide against those allegedly responsible for the crash.
However, the judges ruled that the criminal offense of involuntary manslaughter was not met against either a natural or a legal person.
In Germany, the public prosecutor's office in Düsseldorf stopped its investigation into the crash of the Germanwings plane in 2017.
fek/dpa
