This Friday, Hesse's Justice Minister Roman Poseck (CDU) will present an initiative by the state government on mass proceedings in the civil courts in the Bundesrat.

The background to this is the considerable and increasing burden on the courts of such proceedings over the years.

The core of the problem is that the facts and legal issues often differ only in the details, but each claim – often submitted by specialized law firms that advertise online for customers – still has to be analyzed and negotiated individually.

In Hesse, too, this has meant that in some courts all civil chambers have to deal with mass proceedings, for example from the diesel complex, and the enormous time and human resources are lacking elsewhere.

Anna Sophia Lang

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The German Association of Judges has calculated that around 40,000 lawsuits were filed against car manufacturers at the German higher regional courts in 2019, another 30,000 in 2020 and around 37,500 in 2021.

The numbers are also high for air passenger rights, insurance law - for example due to incorrect premium adjustments in private health insurance - or in banking and capital investment law.

In February 2022, 100 lawsuits from Wirecard investors against the Bafin were filed in one day at the Frankfurt Regional Court.

The court expects thousands more, legal protection insurers are said to have given cost commitments for 20,000 procedures.

"The phenomenon is not new, but it is constantly increasing and leaving traces," writes the judges' association: The psychological situation and motivation of the employees and the rule of law are threatened.

That is why Hesse wants the federal government to present a draft law "quickly" that "enables the courts to deal with mass civil court proceedings efficiently and in a reasonable time".

The proposals essentially include three points: the possibility of earlier fundamental decisions by the Federal Court of Justice, the simplification of the taking of evidence in order to avoid the multiple repetition of witness examinations and expert reports in similar situations, and clear legal requirements on the structure, scope and timing of what the parties present in court.

The judges' association also refers to the potential of artificial intelligence, where there are first model projects.