Facts
A. is the owner of a property in Muri near Bern, which he rented to the Republic of Greece for five years in the fall of 1997, where it established its embassy. At the end of May 1998, a large influx of people from the former Yugoslavia who applied for transit visas at the embassy led to traffic problems in the neighborhood. The municipality of Muri then deployed Securitas guards to regulate the traffic and later demanded reimbursement of the costs amounting to CHF 12,557.30 from the complainant A. The Administrative Court of the Canton of Bern obliged A. to pay a share of CHF 3,000 of these costs.
Considerations
The Federal Court partially upholds A.'s complaint. It finds that the municipal regulation on the allocation of costs for police operations to regulate traffic has a permissible basis in municipal law and does not violate federal law. However, A. as the owner of the property could only be partially held liable as the causer of the situation, as the embassy itself bore the main responsibility for the traffic…