News - damage lawyers

In the current issue of NZZ am Sonntag, our medical malpractice specialist RA Fabian Meyer expresses that there is an increasing number of cases where concerns and worries of relatives of doctors and hospital staff are not taken seriously – often with serious consequences.

In England and Australia, the so-called Martha's Rule counters these risks. Relatives and patients, as well as nursing staff and doctors, have the right to a second opinion from another team in such situations.

Does the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ClimateSeniors of April 9, 2024, open the doors for collective damage claims in Switzerland?

Under Swiss law, there are currently only very limited options for collective legal protection. The only real form is the collective action under Art. 89 of the Swiss Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO), which, however, is only aimed at injunctive relief, removal, or a declaratory judgment, but not at damages or satisfaction. For over a decade, Parliament has been discussing an expansion of collective legal protection.

Time and again, damage lawyers receive inquiries from individuals who have reduced their workload or even taken a professional break for health reasons and later became unable to work (despite that). The reduction or break was often well-intentioned, for example, because they did not want to claim insurance and hoped to recover on their own with some relief. But what if no one knows about the health issues and recovery unfortunately does not occur? Then such measures can have fatal consequences, especially regarding daily sickness benefits and pension funds.

The Federal Court criticized the Social Insurance Court and the SVA Zurich for deviating from a medical report and instead conducting an indicator examination, which led to the rejection of our client's pension claim.

Receiving a termination notice is a significant experience for employees, which in some cases also leads to illness and incapacity for work. This usually results in a performance obligation of the daily sickness benefit insurance. As the following article shows, the insurance is practically always entitled to reduce its benefits after the termination of the employment relationship in this constellation.

As a law firm that deals daily with medical and hospital liability cases, we have recently been particularly confronted with the following two situations: insufficient internal hospital communication and inadequate consideration or examination of legitimate concerns from the relatives of patients (or the patients themselves).

We were also able to achieve top positions again this year in the ranking of the top law firms conducted by Handelszeitung and BILANZ business magazine. In the areas of liability law and social insurance law, we achieved first places and third in insurance law.

We are very pleased to inform you that specialist lawyer Leo Sigg has been admitted to our partnership as of January 1, 2025.

After the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg criticized Switzerland for the second time in the ruling obtained by damage lawyer Martin Hablützel on February 13, 2024, Jann-Zwicker and Jann v. Switzerland (No. 4976/20) for violating the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the case of †Marcel Jann must now be finally assessed domestically.