The judiciary in Hesse returned to "normal operation" on August 1st.

As the President of the Higher Regional Court, Roman Poseck, said on Thursday, this means in particular that home office will largely be ended.

In any case, many judges and court officials were present during the pandemic.

Working with the law requires predominantly contact with people.

The vaccination rate in the Hessian judiciary is high, according to Poseck, he estimates it to be more than 90 percent.

It has been proven that the third violence has been classified as systemically relevant in priority group 3.

Helmut Schwan

Head of the regional section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

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In the ordinary jurisdiction of Hesse, i.e. in civil and criminal jurisdiction, around 250 employees have so far been infected with the corona virus.

There is no death to complain about, but in some cases those affected are seriously ill.

According to previous knowledge, most of them would have been infected in private, which suggests that the security precautions were particularly effective in the courtrooms.

The offers for testing those involved in the proceedings, such as those available in Frankfurt (around 3,000 people have been tested there in the past few months) and Wiesbaden in the judicial buildings, have also been well received.

Court efficiency increased

According to the President of the Higher Regional Court, the Hessian judiciary has managed the balancing act since March of last year, thanks to the common sense and consideration of all those involved, to maintain its capacity to act and to ensure protection against infections as far as possible. This was also made possible because more procedures were carried out in writing or more negotiations were carried out via video.

According to Poseck, the number of executions, a guideline for the efficiency of the courts, increased in the ordinary jurisdiction of Hesse in 2020 despite the corona burden: In the local courts by ten percent to more than 80,000 proceedings, in civil matters the regional courts in the first instance by five percent to more than 29,000 and at the Higher Regional Court by as much as 20 percent to almost 7,000.

Despite the difficulties in negotiating with parties who were necessarily present, the Hessian criminal courts were able to conclude only slightly fewer proceedings compared to 2019.

Vaccination disputes are to be expected

However, Corona is not over, said Poseck. Restrictions such as mask requirement and safety distance during negotiations would therefore have to be maintained. The lightweight halls as alternative quarters for larger processes also remained for the time being. Defendants who have to answer as alleged members of organized crime have to accept that they are not allowed to take off their ankle cuffs during the trial under a tent roof. That was decided by a criminal senate of the OLG on a trial in Wiesbaden. It thus confirmed the chairman of the chamber, who assessed the danger as high that without the shackles the defendants could escape from the hall during the hearing.

The many difficult legal questions raised by the pandemic have long since reached the Higher Regional Court in other areas as the highest authority in the country. The scale that the Senates have dealt with in recent months ranges from the question of whether insurance companies that are supposed to take action in the event of company closures actually have to compensate for the losses during the lockdown, to the dispute over whether the leases of commercial space are reduced as long as the store is closed, up to and including a case under competition law as to whether a solution for flushing the mouth and throat area may be advertised as "corona prophylaxis".

Hesse's top family judges have to decide particularly quickly, especially under the constraints of Corona. They expect the first cases on their table soon if parents cannot agree on whether their son or daughter should be vaccinated. Or whether it is none of their business because the child is sufficiently empowered to determine it himself.