After more than two years, we are closing our free Corona Helpline today. Time for a final review.
Since mid-March 2020, we have answered around 10,000 enquiries. We have been contacted by restaurateurs, event organisers, retailers, solo self-employed people and artists as well as numerous parents, travellers and citizens who have asked us about the current status of coronavirus regulations. At times, up to 10 employees of the law firm were busy answering Corona enquiries. In around 1,000 cases, we went to court for clients with coronavirus issues.
Our law firm has had many clients from the event and cultural sector for decades. So when the first nationwide lockdown was imposed in mid-March 2020, we knew that we would face a lot of questions. We decided to offer a free helpline for initial telephone advice on the first day of the lockdown – 16 March 2020. Nationwide and without any restrictions. We didn’t think for a second about how long we would offer the helpline. We certainly couldn’t have imagined that it would be more than two years.
The response was overwhelming from day one. In the first week alone, we received almost 1,000 requests to call us back. The uncertainty and need was great. Many industries had to close and many self-employed people suddenly had no work and didn’t know how they were going to pay their next rent. We often had the impression that people were simply happy to have a sympathetic ear for their needs. Until recently, the conversations were often long, even if we could hardly help in the specific case.
While the first few weeks were characterised by giving people guidance in a situation that was still very confusing from a legal point of view, official proceedings, urgent applications to the administrative and constitutional courts as well as lawsuits became more frequent in the period that followed. Sometimes it was about a small fine, sometimes about a complex constitutional complaint. Only rarely were clients able to pay us at our usual hourly rates. We conducted more than 95% of the proceedings on the basis of statutory fees or waived our fees completely.
The longer and more detailed the individual coronavirus ordinances became, the more detailed the legal issues became. For example, we dealt with issues such as possible claims for compensation due to the forced closure of businesses. Insurance law issues arose in connection with business closure insurance policies. We were contacted by parents who wanted their children to finally be able to go back to school. We dealt with quarantine regulations for commuters and returning travellers, mandatory testing and masks at schools, dealing with cancelled events, applying for aid, travel bans, 2G access restrictions, vaccination and recovery status. Among other things, we have been successful with numerous urgent applications against the Berlin curfew for restaurants, the enforcement of the right to schooling in Hamburg and Berlin and – more recently – with urgent applications against the unlawful shortening of convalescent status. We were also able to help those affected to finally be able to visit their relatives again. The cases involving bans on visits were particularly moving in human terms.
There were many setbacks and disappointments in the court proceedings. If the incidence figures were high, you didn’t stand a chance with the administrative courts. The reasons given for the rejection decisions were often hair-raising. If, on the other hand, a “wave” subsided and the incidence figures fell, it was easier to make favourable predictions of success with the courts.
Hardly ever did a court dare to fundamentally question coronavirus regulations. The courts only intervened when there were inconsistencies in the regulations, when retailers differentiated according to the square metre size of the shops or schools according to year groups or when they could not quite explain why the risk of infection in a pub after 10 p.m. should be higher than earlier in the evening. Even against inconsistent and pointless regulations, however, there was no chance in the administrative courts when incidence figures rose and new “waves” rolled in.
The curiosities were as colourful as the legal issues surrounding coronavirus when coronavirus regulations came up against reality. For example, for a long time, bars were only allowed to open if seat reservations were offered. Only someone who has ever seen the inside of a bar knows that this is not possible in 80% of bars. The same category also includes the regulation that windows must be open in catering establishments to allow a draught, but all windows must be closed after 10 pm to keep the noise down.
Everything has an end. So now, after more than two years, we are ending our work on the helpline and looking back on countless exciting and challenging cases, but also on some moving conversations with desperate people. Many of the after-effects of the Corona period will continue to accompany us, and we will of course continue to be available at any time.