DR. SARAFI successfully defends a journalist against a lawyer
From our press archive. This communication gives the status of the original publication of 4 April 2024 again. Subsequent developments in the process are not automatically taken into account.
Frankfurt am Main, April 4, 2024 — Frankfurt Regional Court fully rejects application for a preliminary injunction. DR. SARAFI lawyers successfully defend journalists — freedom of opinion prevails over personal rights.
facts
After one of our clients, a journalist — who also works as a YouTuber — critically assessed the work of a media law lawyer on the Internet and described this lawyer on an online platform as a “clown lawyer” and his work as “bad,” the lawyer took legal action against our client and issued two warnings in a short period of time.
Among other things, the lawyer felt that his general personal rights had been violated because of these statements and also saw an attack against his law firm. However, he himself had previously published an article on his website that spread quickly and in which the personal rights of one of our other clients were violated. Our client, who is the subject of this article, reported on this article in his stream and, in this context, was critical of the opposing lawyer, referring to him, among other things, as a “clown lawyer.”
Opponent's legal action
The lawyer, who also works in the field of speech law, now took legal action on his own behalf against our client, the journalist, who, among other things, described him as a “clown lawyer” and rated his work as “bad” and demanded a declaration of injunctive relief from our client.
Our defense
We rejected the opposing lawyer's claims for injunctive relief in their entirety and replied that neither abusive criticism nor formal insult could be assumed, but that these were admissible expressions of opinion, since the dispute on the merits and not the defamation of his person, i.e. the lawyer, was in the foreground and that, when weighing up the conflicting interests, the interest of our client in his freedom of expression is paramount from Art. 5 para. 1 GG vis-à-vis the lawyer's personal rights from Art. 2 para. 1, Art. 1 GG prevails.
Erroneous reasoning on the part of the other side
Interestingly, a lawyer from the opposing lawyer's office, which represented him out of court, drew on a court decision in which a person was punished for calling a police officer a “clown” for insulting because this term was considered an improper expression of opinion there. That is why the opposing lawyers thought that the case could be transferred to ours.
We were able to demonstrate that this is not the case: Unlike in our case, there was no dispute on the matter referred to by the opponent. The special feature in our case is that the lawyer must tolerate such a critical evaluation on the basis of his own public statements and must accept such harsh criticism.
Request for a preliminary injunction
However, the lawyer in question insisted that he was right and filed with the Frankfurt Regional Court for a preliminary injunction against our client. He had to submit our extrajudicial pleadings to the district court.
Success in court
By order of April 3, 2024, the Frankfurt Regional Court rejected the lawyer's applications against our client in full.
Not only were we able to successfully represent our other client against the lawyer's article and enforce his injunctive relief claims in court, but we were also able to successfully ward off the same lawyer's attempt to obtain a preliminary injunction against that other client, the journalist.
Meaning of the decision
This decision makes it clear that each case requires an individual assessment and that the law on defamation and freedom of expression does not allow blanket assumptions as to which statements are permitted or prohibited. Depending on the context and circumstances, the same term or statement may be admissible once and prohibited another time.
Lawyers are not doing themselves any service if they do not carefully examine the specific features of an individual case but instead transfer a case across the board simply because there are similar or the same statements involved. This approach neglects the essential importance of context and individual circumstances, which can be decisive in legal disputes.
conclusion
The case impressively shows how important context is when evaluating statements within the framework of freedom of expression. The term “clown lawyer” was admissible in the present case because it was part of a factual dispute and the lawyer concerned himself had previously made public statements which led to this debate.
DR. SARAFI Rechtsanwälte were able to successfully defend the rights of journalists through well-founded legal arguments and show that freedom of expression also includes harsh criticism when expressed as part of a factual dispute.