Laura Schmitt: Auskunftsansprüche und prozessuale Mitwirkungspflichten, Gebunden

Klappentext

Laura Schmitt examines how information asymmetries are addressed in German substantive and procedural civil law. Her comprehensive analysis shows that, while the current legal framework provides a wide range of instruments to remedy information deficits, these mechanisms are neither sufficiently systematized from a doctrinal perspective nor consistently coordinated in their interaction. In particular, tensions arise between substantive law and procedural law where procedural mechanisms effectively override substantive legal value judgments.

Adopting a doctrinal approach complemented by comparative, constitutional, and EU law perspectives, the author focuses on rights to information, reversals of the burden of proof, and secondary duties of substantiation. She analyzes their prerequisites, functions, and limits in the context of fact-finding, the adversarial principle, the duty of truthfulness, and the principle of good faith. Laura Schmitt demonstrates that German law does not recognize a general right to information. Nevertheless, courts increasingly compensate for information deficits through an expansive application and further development of substantive information rights derived from the principle of good faith, as well as through the doctrine of secondary duties of substantiation. This development creates doctrinal uncertainties and risks circumventing substantive legal evaluations through procedural law.

Building on these findings, the study develops a comprehensive systematization of the existing mechanisms for addressing information asymmetries, clarifies their doctrinal relationship, and proposes ways of recalibrating them within the boundaries of current law. In doing so, it contributes to strengthening the coherence between substantive and procedural law and to the constitutional and EU law-compliant development of German civil procedure.