German Contract Law Five Years After the Fundamental Contract Law Reform in the Schuldrechtsmodernisierung

Abstract

After five years, core questions regarding the large contract law reform in Germany of 2002, the Schuldrechtsmodernisierung, have been answered in the case law, mostly by the German Supreme Court. The article discusses clarifications with respect to: the extent to which consumer law protection applies; the concept of non-conformity with the contract and the remedies based on such non-conformity under the EC Sales Directive (and its German transposition); the different kinds of damages which can be distinguished and questions of their computation; and finally the role which the new legal model plays when standard contract terms in pure business transactions are controlled. The German case law is astonishingly dense in all these respects already.