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The 2019 Formula E race in the city of Bern was staged with a lot of pomp.
The Formula E race, which took place in Bern in June 2019, is still a talking point to this day. At first the local residents were muffled because they were never asked by their left-green city government whether they even wanted the E-Prix event.
Then the trade, which suffered from the race in the lower old town, rebelled.
Finally, Security Director Reto Nause (51, middle) tried to limit the damage. He admitted at the time: “Mistakes happened, I regret that. The residents of the racing district and the shops in the lower old town were not sufficiently informed shortly before the event.
Nevertheless, he gave the event the rating “excellent”: He rated the E-Prix as a success. Said that the pictures of Bern’s old town in the green within the loop of the Aare went around the world. And: The event would not cost the city anything.
Construction company is still waiting for money
Now, four years later, the city is threatened with new adversity – in court. Marti AG is suing the city of Bern, as reported by the “Berner Zeitung” on Monday. The construction company from Mosseedorf BE converted Bern’s streets into a racetrack in 2019. But: The building giant never got the money for the work.
Because: The organizer Swiss E-Prix Organizations made it through the back door – a little later it was broke. Companies that worked for the cause stayed behind on their demands. Also the Marti AG. That’s why she wants to get the open sum of 225,000 francs from the city of Bern. The parties will meet again in court in a few months.
Marti AG invokes a so-called builder’s lien. This right, enshrined in the Civil Code, gives a craftsman a lien on the property on which he worked. A legal trick that is likely to be used for the first time in such a context.
The city of Bern has benefited – and should be liable
The roads on which Marti AG worked for the race belong to the city of Bern, according to the construction company. Even if the work of the construction company was dismantled after the races, the city still benefited from it.
For its part, the city of Bern does not feel guilty. “An organizer places orders with third parties and the city is supposed to be liable? We can’t be responsible for something that we didn’t sign,” says Reto Nause of the “Berner Zeitung”.
It was clearly the organizer who had not fulfilled his obligations, not the city, emphasized Nause. If the construction company were to be heard by the court with its arguments, it would be a fiasco for Bern. Or to put it in Nause’s words: “the death knell” for major events in the capital. Because: “In the future, construction companies could hold the city liable for every occasion that requires work on the city’s soil.”
However, the Bern security director was confident that it would not come to that. “That would be a precedent that would have a significant impact on Switzerland as a whole,” said Nause. (oco)