Termination of user accounts without prior warning: the decision of the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court

Facebook may terminate user accounts without prior warning only in exceptional cases:
The Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court has largely upheld the appeal of a user of the social network “Facebook” against a judgment of the Mannheim Regional Court of June 24, 2020, which dismissed the action.

Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court, Judgment dated 04.02.2022
– 10 U 17/2 –

“Facebook” had in the summer of 2019 in two cases deleted posts of the plaintiff with reference to the so-called “Identitarian Movement” and temporarily blocked the user account of the plaintiff in each case. After another posting by the plaintiff in January 2020, his account was then permanently deactivated. For this, the social network had cited violations by the plaintiff of the terms of use in connection with the “Community Standards,” which, among other things, prohibit the support of “hate organizations.”
The lawsuit for the omission of these deletions and temporary account blocks, as well as for a reactivation of the user account, was predominantly successful in the second instance.

Facebook did not issue a warning before terminating the agreement
In the case to be decided by the 10th Civil Senate, “Facebook” had not issued an effective warning before terminating the user agreement. The previous post deletions and account suspensions had been unlawful due to the established invalidity of the removal and blocking proviso in the general terms and conditions. They were therefore not proper warnings. The warning was also not exceptionally dispensable. There was no final and serious refusal on the part of the plaintiff to comply with the contractual agreements in the future, nor were there any other special circumstances that would make it unreasonable to continue the contractual relationship even without a prior warning. In particular, the plaintiff’s posts did not contain any criminal content. There was therefore no particularly serious breach of contract.