Case Study - SLAPP in Germany

This report focuses a cross-border SLAPP case that received broad public attention: the action taken against the Munich Environmental Institute and the author Alexander Schiebel by a South Tyrolean (Italy) official and more than 1,300 apple farmers.

This case was prominent enough to attract the attention of the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights, who mentioned the legal action against those who criticize pesticides in South Tyrol as an example of abusive legal action against public participation and an attack on freedom of expression in a comment on the issue of SLAPPs.

In September 2017, Arnold Schuler, the then deputy governor of South Tyrol and provincial councillor for agriculture, filed criminal charges against employees of the Munich Environmental Institute, Alexander Schiebel, the author of the book Das Wunder von Mals (The Miracle of Malles), and its publisher Jacob Radloff, the managing director of oekom verlag, which had published the book. More than 1,300 farmers joined the charges.

The reason for the criminal charges was the criticism made by the environmental institute of Munich and the book author aof the employment of pesticides on the South Tyrolean fruit plantations. More than 18,000 hectares of cultivated land in the province are used to grow apples and around ten per cent of the total apples harvested in Europe come from there. Some apple orchards are treated with pesticides more than 20 times a year.

The amount of pesticide used became the subject of the investigative book "The Miracle of Mals" and a critical campaign by the Munich Environmental Institute.

Three years after the criminal complaint by Arnold Schuler, the Italian public prosecutor's office in 2020 brought charges of defamation against Karl Bär, an employee of the Munich Environmental Institute, and the book's author Alexander Schiebel at the regional court in Bolzano.

Alexander Schiebel was acquitted on May 28, 2021. One year later, on May 6, 2022, the criminal court case against Karl Bär and the Umweltinstitut München also ended.

The following report explains the background of this sensational case, as well as the strategies of both sides. Finally, we take a look at the consequences of the legal dispute, which on both sides of the Alps became a symbol of the strategic abuse of rights as well as successful counter-strategies.