Since the devastating accident eleven years ago, nothing is known about Michael Schumacher’s health. A long-time lawyer for the family already explained why. But in 2024 there was suddenly unrest.
It’s been eleven years since Michael Schumacher’s serious skiing accident – on December 29, 2013, the seven-time Formula 1 world champion had an accident in Méribel, France, and sustained life-threatening head injuries. The fate of “Schumi” continues to move fans around the world even more than a decade later.
Nothing is known about the current state of health of the seven-time Formula 1 world champion; the now 55-year-old has been undergoing rehabilitation since the accident in 2013. Relatives and companions only express themselves extremely cautiously and without any details about Schumacher’s current well-being.
“I miss my Michael from back then,” said brother Ralf Schumacher in “Bild” around the tenth anniversary of the accident in 2023. “Life is sometimes unfair. Michael had often been lucky in his life, but then this tragic accident occurred. Thank God, thanks to modern medical options, there was a lot that could be done, but still nothing is the same as it used to be” (read more here) . One thing is clear: the environment and management pay meticulous attention to protecting the privacy of the sports legend with the full range of the law.
In 2024, a public blackmail attempt against the Schumacher family caused a stir: the alleged perpetrators demanded 15 million euros and threatened to publish images and video material. The attempt failed and three people were arrested (read more about this here).
“It was always about protecting private matters,” confirmed Felix Damm in an interview with “Legal Tribune Online” in October 2023. Damm has been the Schumacher family’s press lawyer for 15 years – and also answered the question that many fans have been asking for years: Why isn’t there a single report from the family about Schumacher’s health?
They “also considered whether a final report about Michael’s health could be the right way” in order to effectively curb tabloid reporting. However, this idea was quickly discarded: “That wouldn’t have been the end of it and there would have had to be constantly updated ‘water level reports’. Because as those affected, you don’t have the power to order the media to put an end to it.”
The fear: The media “could pick up on such a report again and again and ask: ‘And what does it look like now?’, one, two, three months or years after the announcement.”
Damm further explained that he was sure “that the vast majority of fans can handle it well and also respect the fact that the accident has set in motion a process in which private shelter is necessary and will now continue to be observed.”
The lawyer criticized the reporting of some media, “even though there is no reliable information; how much you can knit supposed stories out of zero information. As a result, it went so far that ‘the current one’ simply invented an AI-generated interview and put it on the front page.” The case of the AI interview in the tabloid caused sharp criticism, and the editor-in-chief had to leave as a result.
Damm also remembered how “‘experts’ and unknown friends” were used for articles “who, without having any knowledge of the actual circumstances, formulated assessments based on remote diagnostics.”
He particularly fondly remembers a legal success in the fight against dubious reporting about Michael Schumacher: “For example, when the sentence on the front page of a magazine ‘He is no longer with us’ created the tasteless impression that Michael Schumacher had died .” The financial consequences were considerable: “The publisher had to pay 100,000 euros for this sentence. I am not aware of any case where higher monetary compensation had to be paid for the publication of a sentence. This can definitely be considered a success.”