Many regional courts had to deal with the diesel scandal before the Federal Court of Justice decided in the end.
The justice ministers want to prevent this from happening in the event of massive civil lawsuits in the future.
Düsseldorf (dpa) - After the many proceedings relating to diesel cars before courts in Germany, a faster supreme court clarification of fundamental legal questions in mass civil suits is to be made possible.
Following an online conference of the justice ministers of the federal states, chairman Peter Biesenbach (CDU) reported on Thursday that a working group would be quickly set up on the subject in order to work out a procedure and details. It is about the possibility that courts of justice - such as regional courts - can ask the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in advance to clarify legal questions that are important for many proceedings.
"I am thinking of the numerous proceedings in the diesel scandal, for example," said Biesenbach, who is NRW Minister of Justice. There have been a large number of proceedings at the regional courts relating to diesel cars, for which the BGH had to decide in the end what, in its view, was correct. "We could have saved the lower courts a lot of work here if the central question could have been submitted to the Federal Court of Justice", clarified Biesenbach. Then many days of negotiations would not have been necessary. So far, the higher instance has been invoked in civil proceedings and the BGH has not been turned on straight away. This is time-consuming and also tedious.
In the resolution of the Conference of Justice Ministers it is emphasized that a swift supreme court clarification of fundamental legal questions in mass proceedings "reduces the duration and extent of divergent case law of the lower courts - as well as the associated loss of confidence of those seeking justice".
In this way, legal certainty is created for a large number of similarly affected persons.
The clarification of fundamental legal issues by the highest court has so far taken a considerable amount of time, "especially if a litigant party affected by mass actions is geared its procedural tactics to avoid a final judgment with precedent effect".
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Decision of the Conference of Justice Ministers
