Facts
The case concerns the reclaiming of an erroneously paid widow's pension by the Swiss Compensation Office. The appellant had received the pension in good faith based on the pension decision of March 17, 1967 and used it to cover living expenses. The Compensation Office demanded the repayment of the pension payments made from March 1967 to February 1972 amounting to 15,314 Swiss francs.
The Federal Insurance Court had to decide whether and to what extent the appellant was obliged to make a repayment. This particularly concerned the question of the statute of limitations for the reclaim claim pursuant to Art. 47 para. 2 OASI Act and the applicability of the principle of the protection of legitimate expectations.
Considerations
The Court first determined that the reclaim claim for the pension amounts from March to May 1967 was time-barred, as the five-year period under Art. 47 para. 2 OASI Act had expired. In this respect, the appeal was upheld.
For the pensions received from June 1967 onwards, it was decisive whether the Compensation Office was entitled to relate the beginning of the one-year statute of limitations to the time when it became aware of its error. The Court affirmed this and explained that "obtaining knowledge" within the meaning of the law is to be understood as "becoming aware" of the error. The one-year statute of limitations thus begins at the point in time when the administration becomes aware of the erroneous payment, and not already when it could have objectively known about it.
With regard to the principle of the protection of legitimate expectations, the Court found that this must give way to the…