Die Rechtsschutzversicherung im Großschadensfall

In 2015, Volkswagen AG admitted to having installed an inadmissible defeat device in 2.4 million vehicles. Case law and literature quickly established that the injured parties were entitled to damages as a result. Nevertheless, until the decision of the Federal Court of Justice in May 2020, many legal protection insurers refused to cover the costs of the litigation, using a wide variety of arguments. In order to examine this settlement behavior, the author, as a scientific employee of the consumer law firm Gansel, evaluated more than 10,000 letters in over 4,000 cases. The result: denials of coverage and refusals of payment predominantly represent breaches of contract on the part of the insurers.