The Supreme Court (OGH) has now made this clear, as the daily newspaper “Die Presse” reports in its Wednesday edition. The accident happened in August 2019 in southern Styria. The then 20-year-old from Upper Austria suffered a clean bullet. The young Steyrer was operated on. The conscript demanded damages and sued the federal government as the legal entity of the army for around 22,000 euros in damages. The lower courts agreed with him, and the federal government appealed.
forgot to unload
The Supreme Court now emphasized that the federal government cannot invoke a limitation of the employer’s liability in the case of a conscript. This would then strike if the damage was not done intentionally – as actually in this case: The supervisor had supervised the unloading of the firearms, but he must have forgotten to unload his own Glock. When the gun was stowed in the locker, the shot was fired and hit the soldier.
OGH agreed with the lower courts
But the Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts, which emphasized that conscripts should be treated differently than normal employees with regard to this limitation of liability. Because the military personnel do not do this job voluntarily. “The limitation of liability that exists for work accidents suffered by employees cannot therefore be applied to service accidents suffered by conscripts. The fact that military service personnel are treated on an equal footing with employees insofar as they receive benefits from statutory accident insurance for damage caused by injuries sustained on duty,” wrote the OGH on its homepage.
From the archive: Two months after the shooting accident, the injured conscript spoke to OÖN about the traumatic experience and its consequences:
Source: Nachrichten
