Comment by alkonaut
2 days ago
Can't some shady legal firm now just dig out who is in the exact same situation as this user, and sue on behalf of them, keeping (say) 10%? I'd be happy to let them.
But in the end this kind of thing shouldn't be regulated by lawsuits from individuals. The fines as I remember it can be up to 4% global annual revenue and it's about time someone actually handed a fine of 4% global annual revenue to a company the size of Meta, so companies finally realize that the law isn't just a recommendation.
There are (non-shady) firms that do exactly this for other areas (flight compensation, most notably).
There are some issues with contingency fees in German legal professional law. However, it can be argued that suing for these 5,000 EUR is just "collections", so it may be allowed.
The risk lies elsewhere: As I outlined in another comment, there is reason to believe that this may not stand on appeal, or at least that other courts in other parts of Germany may decide differently. As a result, it takes a lot of capital to keep all of these lawsuits going until the Federal Court of Justice or the ECJ have decided and there is legal certainty.
My understanding is that there is no 1-to-1 European equivalent to class action lawsuits in the USA.
There is a EU directive that allows for "representative action" but it's much narrower scope compared to what Americans are familiar with in class action.
Yes. But there's law firms who streamline such individual processes if the business case is actually large enough.
For example there's a law that says the airline needs to pay you 400€(?) if your flight is delayed by more than 2h if it's due to the airlines fault.
There's a company that handles these cases for 130€.
That's 270€ you get and you just need to enter some data.
or you can enter the same data into form provided by the airline. I did it once to SN and they paid up just fine.
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Pedantry: the EU doesn't have a unified legal system.
Yeah, class action-style suits are probably coming, especially now that this ruling sets a precedent
AFAIK Germany (and most European countries) has civil law, so court rulings probably won't have as much of an impact as it would in countries like the US
> AFAIK Germany (and most European countries) has civil law
Most of the world, actually. Pure common law systems are just in CANZUKUS (and a few dozen of other minuscule former British colonies).
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Once it reaches the highest court, it will set precedent. So there is no real difference in the end it just takes more time because no precedent is set in a lower court.