In 2024 Bavaria’s highest regional court, the Bayerisches Oberstes Landesgericht, ruled that a lawsuit between two neighbors in a Munich apartment building was inadmissible. One had insulted the other during an argument in August 2020. The other sued for at least 1,000 euros in damages. He had not first gone through the conciliation procedure that Bavarian law requires.
Federal law allows the states to make certain lawsuits admissible only after an attempt at conciliation. These include some claims between neighbors and insults to personal honor that did not appear in the press or on air. In Bavaria the conciliator is a notary or a lawyer. In other states it is often a Schiedsperson, an honorary local official.
A Rhineland-Palatinate brochure with a foreword by the state’s justice minister carries the title Schlichten ist besser als Richten, settling is better than judging.