The Hamburg Higher Regional Court ruled in the legal dispute between the former image– Editor-in-Chief Julian Reichelt and the mirror decided in favor of the news magazine. the mirrorFor this reason, the article “Birds, promote, fire” about Reichelt can be accessed online again. That was the first thing he did on Monday mirror even public, after a Defeat before the district court of Hamburg only had to take the article off the internet in November.
The text originally appeared in March 2021 and dealt with allegations of abuse of power against Reichelt, who was released in October. Reichelt sued against the mirror and was successful in May with an injunction against the article at the district court of Hamburg. The court followed Reichelt’s reasoning, according to which it was to be assumed that he had not been given sufficient opportunity to comment on the allegations. the mirror finally supplemented the article with a statement from the court proceedings, but left it online, on the grounds that the court’s decision did not mean that the magazine’s reporting of suspicions was fundamentally inadmissible.
In November, the court then decided that this procedure was not sufficient, the “supplemented passages in terms of evaluation” made no relevant difference to the reporting that was prohibited with the injunction. The court imposed a fine of 2,000 euros and the article had to be removed from the network. The magazine immediately lodged an appeal against the decision with the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court, which has now been successful.
The online reporting in question is no longer – “not even in essence” – the same reporting, the Higher Regional Court now says when asked by SZ. “The decision to impose a fine was therefore rescinded.” However, the new decision only goes against the prohibition order from May. “The decision of January 13, 2022 does not contain a substantive assessment of whether this reporting is legal in this form or not,” explains a court spokesman. Reichelt’s legal adviser, the law firm Prinz, was initially unavailable for comment when asked by SZ.