Americans are not the only overly litigious people, your editor discovers.

Who hasn't heard of the lawsuits against McDonalds for its coffee being too hot or its food too fattening. Or more recently, the federal judge in Washington, D.C. that sued his Korean drycleaners for $65 million for giving him back the wrong pants: they failed to live up to their motto of "customer satisfaction guaranteed," he moaned.

The U.S. is famous for its overly litigious population. But Germany has plenty of sue-happy wackos, too, who hit the courts over the most improbable things.

Take the East German farmer who sued a three teenagers because they set off firecrackers that he said caused impotence in his ostrich. Or the irate Berliner who couldn't stand his neighbor's loud laughter anymore. Or the Munich woman who sued the local tax authority for a big mistake in her tax bill even though it should have been worked out outside the courtroom.

As a result, I am not surprised at the number of Germans I know who have "Haftpflichtversicherung," a type of personal liability insurance that covers things like accidentally dropping your friend's cell phone into a pot of boiling soup or other of life's crazy mishaps.

In fact, I even know many who carry legal insurance – and they are not doctors, either.

Maybe they are not crazy.

Recently, a young man came into the newsroom wearing leather jacket and pants and asked if anyone owned a blue bicycle.

I said that I did. I expected him to then tell me that it was lying in the street, run over by a car (I have tremendous bad luck with my bikes -- people like moving them, knocking them over, taking the chain off or generally just stealing my baskets).

Instead, he said that my bike had scratched his motorcycle.

Huh?

He brought me outside and showed me his lovely motorcycle with a small scratch on the silver fender. The scratch wasn't blue. And my bike was not that close by.

When I asked why he thought my bike was the culprit, he said he found it on the ground, and this was the most likely scenario.

I really didn't know the protocol. But when he asked if I had Halfpflictversicherung, I got it. And I got angry. After all, without calling out the CSI teams, how is it that I am to know that my bike hit his when I wasn't even around?

This wasn't the first strange encounter of this sort either.

A few weeks ago, I went through and rated my recent transactions on Ebay as many retailers had asked me to do. While most were a positive experience, I had trouble with one retailer and rated them accordingly.

Ten minutes later, I got a phone call from them threatening me with a lawsuit if I didn't remove my rating. The sad part is that they were quicker to respond to my critique then my repeated calls to work out a billing problem. Regardless, I wonder if it is even possible to sue over something like that in Germany. Probably.

Lesson learned: get insurance.

- JB

Copyright Expatica

1 August 2007

Subject: lawsuits, life in Germany, legal, courts, insurance