Facts
O., born in 1989, was employed as a butcher at R. AG and was therefore compulsorily insured against accidents with the Butchers' Insurance Cooperative (accident insurer). On August 29, 2009, he sat astride a tree branch about four meters high and fell head-first into the approximately 80 cm deep Rhine, sustaining a cervical vertebral fracture with subsequent tetraplegia. The accident insurer subsequently reduced the monetary benefits by 50% because the accident was due to a risk-taking act. O. filed a complaint against this reduction.Considerations
The Federal Supreme Court decided that the head-first jump into the Rhine from a height of about four meters into water of unknown depth is to be classified as an absolute risk-taking act. It is not necessary for the insured person to have known the specific danger, i.e. the actually insufficient water depth. The decisive factor is that the head-first jump into a flowing body of water with unknown depth represents a generally known major danger that the insured person has accepted without prior examination of the water depth. In doing so, he has exposed himself to a particularly great danger, the extent of which he could not limit to a reasonable degree by the manner of…