Originally Posted by Flying Lawyer
Please forgive me for giving some professional advice: It is unlikely that we see a higher court's decision on this. As the local courts are competent for all disputes up to 5000 Euro and I cannot imagine an unrefundable ticket costing 5000 Euro, these disputes will always be with the local courts. Even an appeal is unlikely. Decisions on disputes under 600 Euro (in general) are only appealable if the local court allows the appeal. This only happens if the issue is of general importance. Allthough this issue might be important for this community, it is not really of general importance. And anyway: Even a higher court's decision would only be binding "inter partes".
Cheers
T.
INTER PARTES:
Legal proceedings where all interested parties have been served with adequate notices and are given a reasonable opportunity to attend and to be heard are referred to as inter partes proceedings or hearings. When a judgment is given, subject to any right of appeal, it would be inconvenient if the same issues could be endlessly relitigated by the same parties, so they are all bound by the result. However, anyone who was not a party to those proceedings and who can demonstrate a legitimate interest in reopening the issue, is entitled to petition the court for the right to be heard. However, in some circumstances, the judgment is given in rem, i.e. it binds everyone whether they were a party to the case or not.
Contracts can also be said to be inter partes and various laws can be relied upon to create and vest rights which exist on an inter partes basis only, i.e. they do not attach as an attribute to a person's status and so become in rem rights..
I think you are too strict on this, as even though the German law is not case law, OLG judgements have precedence character (towards their lower courts and as the AGB of LH state that the jurisdiction is Cologne it would be binding for all LH disputes)
INTER PARES: