DECISION
In the legal dispute
xxx,
Plaintiff,
Legal representative:
Attorney Sven Adam
Lange, Geismarstraße 55, 37073 Göttingen
against
Offenbach District,
District Committee Department of Local Government Supervision and Law,
Werner-Hilpert-Straße 1, 63128 Dietzenbach,
Defendant,
The 16th Chamber of the Social Court of Darmstadt decided on June 5, 2023, through its presiding judge, Judge xxx:
The defendant must reimburse the plaintiff's extrajudicial costs.
REASONS
The plaintiff's application for reimbursement of extrajudicial costs by the defendant is admissible and well-founded.
If a legal dispute is concluded other than by judgment, the court, upon application by a party, must decide by order which party is to bear the costs necessary for the appropriate pursuit or defense of its legal rights (§ 193 para. 1 sentence 2 and para. 2 of the Social Court Act (SGG)). The decision to be made in this respect is at the court's discretion and is neither bound by the applications nor dependent on the outcome of the legal dispute (cf. Meyer-Ladewig, Commentary on the SGG, 13th ed., § 193 marginal note 12). However, the outcome of the legal dispute as well as the factual and legal situation must be considered in exercising this discretion. The court may also consider whether there was cause for initiating the proceedings (Meyer-Ladewig, ibid., § 193 marginal note 12b). The court must, however, take all circumstances of the individual case into account. It may not base its decision solely on the outcome of the legal dispute. Even a prevailing party can be ordered to reimburse costs according to the principle of causation. The court can consider the reason for the lawsuit, for example, if the defendant gave cause for the lawsuit through improper handling of the case or contributed to confusion through ambiguous statements, or conversely, whether the plaintiff caused unnecessary costs (Meyer – Ladewig, loc. cit., § 193 para. 12b with further references).
Applying these principles, the defendant is obligated in the present case to bear the plaintiff's extrajudicial costs. Reimbursement of costs by the defendant is equitable in this case. Since the discretionary decision to be made pursuant to Section 193 of the Social Court Act (SGG) is a discretionary decision based on equity, in which all circumstances of the individual case can be taken into account, the primary focus should not be on the success of the action, but rather on a weighting of all criteria (cf. Lower Saxony-Bremen Higher Social Court, judgment of March 19, 2014 – L 13 AS 233 / 12 -; Juris).
In the present proceedings, the criterion of the prospects of success on the merits is of paramount importance, taking into account all relevant criteria. The plaintiff has prevailed completely in these proceedings by virtue of the defendant's decision of February 27, 2023. It is irrelevant whether the issuance of this decision actually constituted a procedural admission of the claim. This is because the decisive provision in these proceedings, Section 2 Paragraph 1 Sentence 4 Number 1 of the Asylum Seekers' Benefits Act (AsylbLG), was declared unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court in its decision of October 19, 2022 (Case No.: 1 BvL 3/21). In any event, due to this decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, the plaintiff is entitled to the higher benefit claim against the defendant for the period in dispute here, as asserted in these proceedings.
Due to the plaintiff's resulting success in the main proceedings, the defendant is obligated to reimburse the extrajudicial costs, taking into account all relevant criteria.
In the present proceedings, which concern solely the decision on costs, the defendant cannot invoke Section 15 of the Lawyers' Fees Act (RVG) as a counter-argument. This provision governs only the scope of compensation for legal fees and thus necessarily presupposes a corresponding claim for fees in principle. However, this is not a matter to be decided in the present proceedings, as the sole issue here is the question of the defendant's obligation to reimburse the plaintiff's extrajudicial costs already incurred. The defendant is, however, free to reiterate his arguments within the framework of the cost assessment proceedings.
The appeal against this decision is excluded § 172 para. 3 SGG.
