Facts
In this case, there was a dispute between A. AG and B. over additional salary in the form of cash bonuses. B. asserted claims for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013 totaling CHF 480,000, but only filed a partial claim for a portion of CHF 30,000. The lower court had partially upheld the partial claim, without addressing the amount of the claims for the years 2011 and 2013.
A. AG argued before the Federal Supreme Court that the claim should have been dismissed for lack of sufficient substantiation, as B. had not specified the order and extent to which the individual claims were being asserted.
Considerations
The Federal Supreme Court concluded that this was not an issue of substantiation, but rather a procedural question of sufficient individualization of the legal claim. While substantive federal law does not require further specification when only a portion of a divisible claim is sued for, the Swiss Civil Procedure Code (ZPO) requires that in the case of a partial claim with an objective joinder of claims (i.e., multiple divisible claims are asserted in…