The fourth civil senate of the Higher Regional Court (OLG) Zweibrücken on Thursday rejected the appeal by BTE President Steffen Jost and operator of the Jost fashion stores in Grünstadt against the Sunday openings in the Zweibrücken fashion outlet.
With the support of the BTE, Jost had sued a Betty Barclay shop there because the fashion outlet Zweibrücken was allowed to open on 16 Sundays a year due to a special regulation in Rhineland-Palatinate due to its proximity to the Zweibrücken airport. However, scheduled air traffic has been discontinued at the airport there for years.
The stationary retail trade in Rhineland-Palatinate and in the region around the outlet is only allowed to open on up to four Sundays. A specific reason must be proven for this — according to the BTE, a “bureaucratically complex” process. According to the association, this is a “massive unequal treatment” that is “no longer acceptable under competition law” for the retail trade concerned.
The Higher Regional Court saw this differently and referred to the regulation of the Rhineland-Palatinate state government, which allows the Zweibrücker outlet to be open many Sundays. Accordingly, “Betty Barclay was able to trust that the company was allowed to conduct its business accordingly”.
With its judgment, it did not decide on the “general legality of the Sunday openings in the outlet,” according to the presiding judge Ulf Petry. Rather, the question was whether the Betty Barclay fashion company, which Jost was suing, could have gained an unacceptable competitive advantage over Jost’s fashion shops in other cities as a tenant in the outlet. The court did not see it that way.
The unequal treatment between the Fashion Outlet Zweibrücken and the stationary trade was not discussed. However, the Federal Court of Justice allowed an appeal. According to the BTE, Jost will “decide how to proceed in close consultation with the BTE” as soon as the written grounds for the judgment are available.