BGH will decide on the reimbursement of bets

It’s about time. The First Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice has to decide whether a sports betting operator who did not have the required license from the competent authority in Germany must reimburse the lost bets of a player.

This case differs significantly from the proceedings under case number I ZR 53/23, which the Senate has suspended, in that the subject matter here is not online poker games, which are subject to the total ban under Section 4 para. 4 Interstate Treaty on Gambling in the version that came into force on July 1, 2012 and is valid until June 30, 2021 (GlüStV 2012), but online sports betting for which the defendant operator holds a license pursuant to Section 4 para. 5, §§ 4a, 10a GlüStV 2012 had applied for…

Facts:

The defendant, based in Malta, offers sports betting on the Internet via a German-language website. The plaintiff participated in sports betting with the defendant from 2013 to 2018. During this period, the defendant held a license from the Maltese gambling supervisory authority, but did not have a permit to organize sports betting from the German authority. The defendant had applied for such a license. At the request of the defendant, the Wiesbaden Administrative Court obliged the competent authority to grant the defendant the license (see Wiesbaden Administrative Court, judgment of 31 October 2016 – 5 K 1388/14.WI). This was done in a decision dated October 9, 2020.

The plaintiff asserts the inadmissibility of the sports bets and the invalidity of the betting contracts. He claims that he did not know that the defendant’s offer was a prohibited game of chance. With his lawsuit, he demanded repayment from the defendant of the payments made to it in the amount of the losses suffered of € 3,719.26 plus interest as well as indemnification from pre-trial legal fees.

Previous process history:

The district court dismissed the action. The Regional Court dismissed the plaintiff’s appeal against this decision. It assumed that the plaintiff was not entitled to repayment under Section 812 para. 1 sentence 1 case 1 BGB. The defendant had not obtained the plaintiff’s payments without legal grounds because the sports betting contracts were valid. The defendant had violated § 4 para. 1 and against § 4 para. 4 and 5 GlüStV 2012. However, this does not result in the nullity of the contracts in accordance with Section 134 BGB. The unilateral violation of a prohibition law only leads to nullity if the purpose of the law cannot be achieved in any other way and the provision made by legal transaction cannot be accepted. This could not be assumed because the defendant had a license pursuant to § 10a para. 2 GlüStV 2012 and meets the substantive requirements for the granting of a license. The lack of permission was merely due to the fact that the implementation of the concession procedure was contrary to EU law. In this constellation, it was neither possible to punish the infringement under criminal law nor to prohibit the organization of sports betting under administrative law. Under civil law, this means that a breach of the provisions of the State Treaty on Gambling does not lead to the nullity of the betting contracts pursuant to Section 134 BGB.

A claim of the plaintiff also does not follow from § 823 para. 2 BGB. § 4 para. 4 and 5 GlüStV 2012 and Section 284 of the German Criminal Code (StGB) would not qualify as protective laws within the meaning of Section 823 para. 2 BGB into consideration.

With the appeal allowed by the Court of Appeal, the plaintiff continues to pursue his claims.

Author: Marian Härtel

Marian Härtel ist Rechtsanwalt und Fachanwalt für IT-Recht mit einer über 25-jährigen Erfahrung als Unternehmer und Berater in den Bereichen Games, E-Sport, Blockchain, SaaS und Künstliche Intelligenz. Seine Beratungsschwerpunkte umfassen neben dem IT-Recht insbesondere das Urheberrecht, Medienrecht sowie Wettbewerbsrecht. Er betreut schwerpunktmäßig Start-ups, Agenturen und Influencer, die er in strategischen Fragen, komplexen Vertragsangelegenheiten sowie bei Investitionsprojekten begleitet. Dabei zeichnet sich seine Beratung durch einen interdisziplinären Ansatz aus, der juristische Expertise und langjährige unternehmerische Erfahrung miteinander verbindet. Ziel seiner Tätigkeit ist stets, Mandanten praxisorientierte Lösungen anzubieten und rechtlich fundierte Unterstützung bei der Umsetzung innovativer Geschäftsmodelle zu gewährleisten.