DE: No appeal because of missing "ü"?

Jun 3, 2022 Benn-Ibler Rechtsanwälte

If attachments are sent to the court via the special electronic lawyer's mailbox (beA), the file name may also contain umlauts such as an "ü". According to the German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH), if the court computer misses the document due to this fact, this may not be the cause for a missed deadline.

In the case at hand, the timely receipt of a statement of grounds of appeal failed because the court computer did not recognise the umlaut "ü" contained in the file name "statement of grounds of appeal" (in German: “Berufungsbegründung”). The statement submitted via the beA therefore never reached the court of appeal.

A lawyer had appealed against a dismissal of an action by the Regional Court and sent the statement of grounds - from his point of view - to the Higher Regional Court in due time via his beA. To his surprise, the Higher Regional Court rejected the appeal as inadmissible on the grounds that a notice of appeal (as an attachment to the statement) had not been properly received by the expiry of the deadline. A renewed attempt to send the appeal via the beA also failed. The subsequent application for reinstatement was also rejected despite the submission of screenshots and the transmission protocol documenting the proper transmission.

Investigations revealed that a message had been sent via the beA in due time, but without content. The internally commissioned specialised division of justice was aware of the problem that transmission errors can occur insofar as the file names of the attachments contain special characters or umlauts. According to the BGH, the Court of Appeal should have considered this possibility.

The BGH stated that the lawyer was not obliged to name the file "Berufungsbegruendung". The effectiveness of the receipt of documents sent via the beA was not precluded if the inability to forward the message was triggered by the fact that the file name contained an umlaut. Although a submitted electronic document must be suitable for processing by the court, Section 2 of the Regulation on the Technical Framework Conditions for Electronic Legal Transactions and on the Special Electronic Public Authority Mailbox does not provide for prohibitions of umlauts.

BGH, VI ZB 25/20 (08.03.2022)