Background
The plaintiff bought a Dethleffs Trend A5887 motorhome in September 2016. Defendant No. 2 manufactured its Fiat Ducato base vehicle. Alleging that the vehicle contained unlawful defeat devices, the plaintiff sued principally for damages.
The Bamberg Regional Court dismissed the action. Among other grounds, it found insufficient allegations of objectively immoral conduct and intent to cause harm, no adequately pleaded loss because the EC type approval was not endangered, and no claim under Section 823(2) of the German Civil Code based on the cited emissions rules. The Bamberg Higher Regional Court dismissed the plaintiff’s appeal as inadmissible, reasoning that his appellate brief had not adequately challenged the trial court’s independent finding that he suffered no loss.
The Court’s Holding
The Federal Court of Justice set aside the dismissal of the appeal as to Defendant No. 2 and remanded the matter to the appellate court. It held that the appellate brief satisfied Section 520(3), sentence 2, nos. 2 and 3 of the German Code of Civil Procedure. Although the plaintiff did not address the absence-of-loss ground under a separate heading, his case-specific arguments substantively attacked that ground.
In particular, the plaintiff alleged that the challenged defeat devices had not been disclosed or examined during type approval, that the relevant vehicle type had not been reviewed by the Italian approval authority, and that a concrete risk of a future recall therefore existed. Those assertions directly challenged the trial court’s premise that the type approval was secure and thus sufficiently placed its loss analysis in dispute. The Court also found that the plaintiff had preserved the issue by responding to the appellate court’s warning order. Whether his appeal ultimately succeeds on the merits remains for the appellate court to decide.
Key Takeaways
- An appellate brief must attack every independently sufficient ground supporting the judgment, but it need not organize each challenge under a separate heading.
- An argument directed nominally at one issue can satisfy the briefing requirement for another ground when, as a matter of substance, it also undermines that ground.
- Courts assessing admissibility ask whether the appeal identifies case-specific reasons that could call the judgment into question, not whether those reasons are legally correct or ultimately persuasive.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces the distinction between an appeal’s admissibility and its merits. German appellate courts may not impose overly formal briefing requirements when the appellant’s submissions, read substantively, identify why the trial court’s decisive reasoning is contested.
For emissions and other technically complex litigation, the ruling shows that allegations concerning undisclosed regulatory features, the scope of approval-authority review, and recall risk may collectively preserve a challenge to a finding of no loss, even if the brief discusses those facts elsewhere in its argument.