With two judgments, the Federal Administrative Court ruled in favour of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia represented by CBH.
On 10 April 2019, the Federal Administrative Court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht - BVerwG) in Leipzig ruled in two rulings in favour of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) that the State Authority for Road Construction in North Rhine-Westphalia ("Landesbetrieb Stra-ßen.NRW") had sufficiently observed immission protection (noise and air requirements) during the six-lane extension of the A 46 motorway between Düsseldorf and Wuppertal to the "Sonnborner Kreuz" intersection.
The lawsuit was brought by the city of Wuppertal, which had requested more protection - the A 46 passes a school and a day-care centre near the motorway. According to the 9th Senate of the Federal Administrative Court, however, the state complies with all legal immission protec-tion requirements, in particular the air pollutant limit values. The city of Wuppertal was there-fore not violated in its own rights.
Even a complaining community of owners of a high-rise building above the A 46 did not get through with their wish for a noise protection tunnel: The tunnel solution desired by the plain-tiff would be disproportionate in particular in view of the associated high costs and the preloading of the plaintiff's property, the Leipzig federal judges decided.
BVerwG, judgements of 10 April 2019 (file number 9 A 22.18 and 9 A 24.18)
Dr Tassilo Schiffer and Dr Cornelia Wellens represent the State of NRW.
CBH obtains new regulation of municipal financial equalisation and pursues administrative court test cases to review the State Financial Equalisation Act 2014
The financial situation of many cities and administrative districts in Rhineland-Palatinate has been desolate for many years. Cities such as Pirmasens and Kaiserslautern have been among the most heavily indebted municipalities in Germany for years. In response to a com-plaint by the Neuwied district, represented by CBH, the Constitutional Court of Rhineland-Palatinate ruled in 2012 that the main reason for this was insufficient and therefore unconstitutional funding of the mu-nicipalities by the state (judgment of 14.02.2012, VGH N 3/11- PDF-Download).