A model declaratory action (MFK) is a civil-procedure tool under §§ 606 ff. ZPO [Sections 606 et seq. of the German Code of Civil Procedure] by which many people or small businesses can have shared questions of fact and law clarified jointly before a court. It does not force anyone to sue and is not an automatic payout. In the proceedings TeslaNow GmbH ./. DVAG / Generali (LG Frankfurt am Main, 2-10 O 2/26), the Plaintiff submits constellations that, according to the Plaintiff's submission, could potentially affect several million DVAG customers — this page explains how an MFK works, who is entitled to bring it and what avenues are open to affected persons.
A model declaratory action against DVAG does not exist today. At the earliest, it can arise once the Frankfurt judgment is handed down — realistically in 2027 or 2028.
Whoever waits may be unlucky. Claims become time-barred after three years — and the clock keeps ticking, whether or not a class action exists.
Today, you cannot "register" anything. But you can secure documents and seek advice — that is the only sensible preparation.
TeslaNow gathers notices and arranges contact. TeslaNow is not an official register and provides no legal advice.
If you answer one or more of these questions with "yes", a notice may be worthwhile:
Under German civil law, claims are generally time-barred after three years — counted from the end of the year in which you knew or should have known of the harm (§§ 195, 199 BGB [Sections 195, 199 German Civil Code, regular limitation period and start of the period]). At the latest, after ten years from conclusion of the contract, the maximum cut-off applies (§ 199 Abs. 3 BGB).
Three rules of thumb:
Important: Registering for a class action suspends the limitation period — but only if the class action exists and you actively register. Anyone waiting for a class action that does not yet exist runs the risk that their claim becomes time-barred in the meantime.
Submit a notice as an affected person. We do not assess your individual claim, but we sort notices, identify patterns and, on request, arrange contact with suitable support.
Submit notice as affected personA model declaratory action — MFK for short — is an instrument of collective legal protection. Its purpose is to clarify whether certain facts or legal questions are to be assessed uniformly across many similarly situated cases.
That means: not every affected person has to carry the same fundamental question alone through all instances. Instead, a qualified association can have central questions determined by a court. Such determinations may later become important for enforcing individual claims.
Important: a model declaratory action does not automatically replace every individual case. It is not a blanket payout procedure and not a guarantee of damages. It can, however, help clarify shared structural questions in court — for instance, whether a particular business model, a particular contractual arrangement or a particular external presentation was legally tenable.
TeslaNow is conducting its own proceedings against Deutsche Vermögensberatung AG and Generali Deutschland Versicherung AG before the Landgericht Frankfurt am Main. According to the Plaintiff's submission, the subject matter of the proceedings includes, among other things, questions concerning the role of the distribution channel, the contractual arrangements, the policing process and the economic effects of the system. The Defendants oppose this submission; no decision has yet been rendered. The proceedings are documented as a § 826 BGB [Section 826 German Civil Code, intentional unethical damage] case with multiple factual complexes and an EVIL extension.
From these proceedings a broader question may arise: Does this concern only TeslaNow — or are there further individuals, companies or customer groups who have had comparable experiences?
We want to make visible whether there are further affected persons who have experienced similar structures — for example in connection with:
We do not claim that every case is the same. We collect notices, sort recurring patterns and, on request, establish contact with supporting bodies.
Anyone facing a large organisation as an individual is generally in a practical asymmetry. Legal sociology speaks here of repeat players on one side — actors regularly involved in comparable proceedings, with their own legal departments, fixed standard processes and experiential knowledge from many cases — and one-shotters on the other side: individuals or small companies for whom such proceedings are a one-off event, formative for one's life history or even existence.
This asymmetry is not an accusation but a structural fact. It affects time, depth of preparation, document management and the ability to penetrate a matter consistently over years. Anyone who fails to balance the asymmetry risks similarly situated structural questions repeatedly resurfacing in many individual proceedings — without a uniform answer ever emerging.
Networking is therefore not a campaign. Networking is orderly legal mobilisation: the systematic visibility of recurring structures, the bundling of notices, the referral to qualified bodies. It replaces neither lawyer nor court — but it makes it possible for many individual cases to come together into a jointly assessable picture.
With the diagnostic questions, one thing matters above all: which camp was your contact person in legally? Three camps are possible:
You may contact us if you ask yourself:
We accept notices and can — where appropriate — establish contact with individuals, initiatives, associations or legal support that deals with collective enforcement of rights.
To be clear:
Our aim is information and networking: affected persons should not remain isolated when many have experienced the same structure.
With the Consumer Rights Enforcement Act (Verbraucherrechtedurchsetzungsgesetz, VDuG), which on 13 October 2023 replaced the model declaratory action of § 606 ZPO old version, German collective-action law has been reorganised. It now knows two types of action: the redress action (for performance) and the model declaratory action.
§ 41 VDuG regulates the model declaratory action as the second type of action alongside the redress action. It does not aim at immediate performance, but at the binding determination of factual and legal preconditions that are the same for many similarly situated claims. The determination is binding for claims subsequently registered; individual enforcement remains the responsibility of each registered party.
§ 1 Abs. 2 VDuG places small businesses on an equal footing with consumers for the purposes of the act. The condition is that the business
This has practical significance: even small businesses — tradespeople, craft enterprises, small service providers — can fall within the protective scope of the collective action when, structurally, they stand in a similar position to individual consumers.
The Bundesamt für Justiz maintains the collective-action register. There, publicly announced model declaratory actions and redress actions are published. After public announcement, online forms for registration are also available there. Registration is only effective if the mandatory information is provided in full. The Bundesamt für Justiz does not check the information substantively.
Important: Registration in the collective-action register can only be made via the Bundesamt für Justiz — not via TeslaNow. TeslaNow accepts notices from affected persons, sorts them and, on request, arranges contact. A registration within the meaning of § 46 VDuG must be made by affected persons themselves with the Bundesamt für Justiz, once a corresponding action has been publicly announced.
Do you feel you are affected? Send us a brief message with the subject line:
"MFK / Betroffenenhinweis" to justiz@teslanow.de
Please state:
We will get back to you and let you know whether and how networking or referral to support bodies is possible.