According to a ruling by the Kiel Regional Court, Förde Sparkasse has to reimburse a prepayment penalty of EUR 14,000.00.
In its current sentence of November 4, 2022 on file no. 12 O 198/21, the Kiel Regional Court found that a clause in the form of the Deutscher Sparkassenverlag of the March 2016 version does not meet the legal requirements. The plaintiff, represented by HAHN Rechtsanwälte, received a real estate loan from the defendant Sparkasse with a contract dated 14 December 2016. In March 2021 the plaintiff sold the financed property and, in particular, paid a so-called advance payment penalty of € 14,111.43. The advance payment penalty was requested due to the fixed interest period contractually envisaged until December 30, 2031.
The regional court ruled that the defendant Förde Sparkasse was to reimburse the plaintiff the advance payment penalty of EUR 14,111.43, the processing fee of EUR 200.00 and the documentation fee of EUR 25.00. The request for prepayment penalties was excluded because the Sparkasse contract did not contain sufficient information on the calculation of prepayment penalties.
“Shortly before, we had already convinced the Weiden district court of our legal opinion that the information in the forms of the Deutscher Sparkassenverlag for calculating the advance payment penalty was insufficient,” explains Hamburg lawyer Christian Rugen of HAHN Rechtsanwälte. “The Förde Sparkasse would be reckless to appeal against the convincing ruling of the Kiel regional court,” adds lawyer Rugen. A final judgment by the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main has already been handed down against Commerzbank AG in a similar matter relating to case number 17 U 810/19.
HAHN Rechtsanwälte offers customers of all German credit institutions a free initial assessment to check whether a required prepayment penalty must be paid and whether a prepayment penalty paid in the past can be recovered. “In our experience, many other banks have made similar mistakes,” concludes Rugen.
