Frankfurt / Main (dpa / lhe) – Roman Poseck, the President of the Higher Regional Court (OLG) Frankfurt, hopes a year after the first wave of corona infections that there will be a prompt vaccination offer for judicial employees. Especially the bailiffs are confronted with foreclosure tasks again and again with unforeseen situations and many people in a confined space, he said. Despite Corona regulations, lockdown and restrictions, the number of proceedings in Hessian courts decreased only slightly in the Corona year, according to Poseck in a balance sheet published on Wednesday.
For about eight weeks, the work of the court had to be limited to particularly urgent proceedings. Since mid-May 2020, court operations have been running almost back to normal with compliance with special protective measures.
“The rule of law must not take a break even in difficult times,” emphasized Poseck. “Many of the procedures that we conduct do not tolerate delay. We are currently relying on numerous hygiene rules in the negotiations, such as maintaining clearances or, in the case of unavoidable shortfalls, the use of Plexiglas partitions between the parties involved.”
In order to enable the observance of distances in larger proceedings with many participants, external buildings such as town houses or congress halls were also rented and court tents or lightweight construction halls were erected in Gießen, Limburg and Wiesbaden for proceedings in ordinary jurisdiction. At the OLG itself, the number of listeners had to be limited in the proceedings, which were subject to special security measures, such as the trial against the murderer of the Kassel District President Walter Lübcke. “Our legal proceedings are a constant balancing act between health protection and the ability to act,” said Poseck. This has just become clear with the Lübcke process.
However, the pandemic also contributed to new procedures. Not only were the possibilities of the written procedure used intensively, the video negotiation also gained in importance. According to estimates, modern video conferencing technology is now used in around ten percent of civil proceedings before the Hessian local and regional courts and the OLG.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210317-99-857945 / 2
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