DR. SARAFI lawyers partially avert preliminary injunction against lawyer and influencer Dr. Sebastian Skradde

Frankfurt am Main, July 11, 2025 — Following our successful action against the influencer “Zara Secret” before the Regional Court in Frankfurt, her legal representative, Dr. Sebastian Skradde, also personally defended herself against our client's reporting. But even this time, the interim injunction requested by Skradde could only be partially enforced. The Cologne Regional Court granted the application only in a marginal point and also confirmed the admissibility of the challenged statements, including criticism of its own legal action.

Starting point of the proceedings: The failed preliminary injunction before the Regional Court of Frankfurt

As a lawyer for “Zara Secret”, Dr. Skradde tried unsuccessfully in March 2025 to file a preliminary injunction against our client. We rejected the warning from March 2025 on March 8, 2025. Nevertheless, on March 10, 2025, Skradde filed an application with the Regional Court in Frankfurt for a preliminary injunction without submitting the reply, even though it had already been received by him. He also dated the application back to March 7, 2025.

Our client later criticized this approach in a YouTube video. In it, he dealt not only with the allegations of content, but also with the way in which Skradde had filed the application with the Regional Court of Frankfurt, in particular the withholding of the letter of reply and the backdating.

Skradde then tried again to file a preliminary injunction, this time before the Cologne Regional Court, this time not as a client's lawyer, but on his own behalf.

The attacked statements

The subject of the proceedings included the following passages from our client's video:

• “And now the question is when did the opposing lawyer contact the court and not truthfully pretend that I wasn't fighting back?”
• “It's super easy to refute the fact that we're fighting back unless you backdate the letter, because that's where our response came in and you can then talk yourself out of it if necessary that you only knew about it afterwards. So when it turns out to be stupid, he didn't want to know anything about it.”
• “The opposing lawyer wrote a warning on 05.03.2025, it reached me on 06.03.2025 and on 07.03.2025 we responded and returned the warning, which, as we have already discussed, was abused from the court.”
• “But since we fought back on 07.03., there is now a problem.”

In the critical report about Skradde, our client mistakenly displayed the draft response dated March 7, 2025 and therefore referred to this date in terms of content. In fact, however, the response was only submitted on March 8, 2025. The Cologne Regional Court considered this statement to be an untrue statement of fact and held that the relevant average recipient recognized a significant difference as to whether or not a response had been made within the set period. Remarkably, however, the video viewer was not aware of the deadline of March 7, 2025, as it was not mentioned anywhere. Nevertheless, the Cologne Regional Court maintained its legal opinion. An appeal to the Cologne Higher Regional Court is currently being examined.

Why the Cologne Regional Court considered the criticism to be largely admissible

The court has recognized that the statements made by our client are part of a public dispute and are therefore covered by the scope of Article 5 (1) GG.

The court's reasoning points to two central points:

1. Permissible criticism of lawyers' litigation. The statement that Skradde “didn't truthfully pretend that I wasn't fighting back?” , be a protected value judgment. The court confirmed that failure to mention the response to the Frankfurt Regional Court is an objective process which may be the basis for admissible criticism.

2. The phrase “backdate” is admissible. Even after Skradde's own presentation, the date in the letter of application was not congruent with the actual receipt by the court. This allowed our client to criticize the process in this way, even exaggerated.

The Cologne Regional Court states literally that “the recipient sees the statement as an evaluative assessment of the conduct of proceedings based on a comprehensible core of facts.” An immediate complaint before the Cologne Higher Regional Court was unsuccessful.

conclusion

The proceedings once again show that an attempt to prevent critical reporting of legal or business conduct through preliminary injunctions does not have to be successful. Where, as here, an acute assessment based on facts is carried out, freedom of speech protects both content criticism and satirical escalation.

Our client was thus able to largely assert himself not only against the warning from “Zara Secret”, but also against the subsequent order issued by her lawyer. The attempt to prevent criticism through legal means has thus failed once again.

A continuation of the proceedings before the Cologne Higher Regional Court is currently being considered.

For inquiries:
DR. SARAFI Rechtsanwälte
info@sarafi.de