Electricity package price after consensual contract termination

114 C 400/17Court of First InstanceJan 23, 2018Civil lawPartially granted

Extracted by Omnilex

Omnilex summary

The plaintiff sued the defendant for amounts due under an electricity supply contract providing for an annual package price. The contract terms required payment of the entire package price even if the parties consensually ended the agreement. The Bonn District Court held that this standard term unreasonably disadvantaged the customer and violated the transparency requirement in BGB § 307(1), second sentence. It ordered the defendant to pay €4.36, with interest at five percentage points above the basic rate from 26 September 2017, and dismissed the remainder of the claim. The plaintiff was ordered to bear the costs.

Omnilex headnote

BGB § 307(1), second sentence; a standard term in an electricity supply contract providing for an annual package price is invalid if it requires the customer to pay the full amount even where the parties consensually terminate the contract before the year ends. Such a term fails to make sufficiently clear that the price remains payable irrespective of the duration of supply and unreasonably disadvantages the customer. The agreed package price cannot, by standard terms, be imposed in full for a period in which the contractual supply relationship has ended by agreement.

Full text

Amtsgericht Bonn — 114 C 400/17 — Urteil

Entscheidungsdatum: 2018-01-23

Aktenzeichen: 114 C 400/17

ECLI: ECLI:DE:AGBN:2018:0123.114C400.17.00

Dokumenttyp: Urteil

Spruchkörper: 114. Zivilabteilung

Normen: BGB §§ 433 Abs. 2, 307 Abs. 2 S. 2

Leitsätze

Sieht ein Stromlieferungsvertrag mit einem Paketpreis für ein Jahr auch für den Fall einer einverständlichen Vertragsaufhebung vor, dass der gesamte Paketpreis geschuldet ist, verstößt diese Regelung der Allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen gegen § 307 Absatz 1 Satz 2 BGB, da es sich um eine unangemessene Benachteiligung des Kunden handelt.

Tenor

Der Beklagte wird verurteilt, an die Klägerin 4,36 € nebst Zinsen in Höhe von 5 Prozentpunkten über dem Basiszinssatz seit dem 26.09.2017 zu zahlen.

Im Übrigen wird die Klage abgewiesen.

Die Klägerin trägt die Kosten des Rechtsstreits.

Das Urteil ist vorläufig vollstreckbar.

Keywords

standard termselectricity supplypackage pricingcontract terminationtransparencyunreasonable disadvantage

Key legal questions extracted by Omnilex

Whether the defendant owes the full annual electricity package price despite consensual termination, and the amount recoverable.

The contractual standard term requiring the full package price even after consensual termination is an unreasonable disadvantage to the customer and is invalid; only €4.36 plus interest was awarded.

A term requiring the entire annual package price after the parties agree to end the supply contract fails the transparency requirement under BGB § 307(1), second sentence, and unreasonably disadvantages the customer.

Allocation of the costs of the proceedings.

The plaintiff bears the costs of the proceedings.

Continue your research in ChatGPT or Claude

Connect Omnilex to search the legal corpus from your AI assistant.