Gym special notice right must be

Gym special notice right must be

29/12/2014

In many gyms you can only train if you make long-term contracts. Often the minimum term is twelve months. However, people who become seriously ill can or should often stop exercising. A court now ruled that gyms then have to grant a special right of termination.

No inappropriate deprivation
Contracts in the gym are usually completed with a minimum term of twelve or 24 months. However, in many cases, people can not or should not practice exercise if they become seriously ill. As the news agency dpa reported, the district court of Rostock now ruled that gyms in such cases must grant a special right of termination. The terms and conditions in gym contracts therefore do not allow consumers to be unduly disadvantaged.

Special right of termination in the case of long-term sports unfitness
Thus, according to the information, it is not immediately permissible to deny members the right to special resignation in the event of proven long-term unfitness for sport. The consumer center Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania had moved against corresponding contractual clauses before the Regional Court of Rostock (Az .: 3 O 528/14). It is said that a gym demanded a medical certificate from the members of the presumably longer period of unfitness for physical fitness, from which the expected downtime results. The dpa report that this should be submitted no later than one week after the beginning of the Sportuntauglichkeit.

Gym changed clauses voluntarily
The terms of business stated: „In this case the membership will be extended according to the granted time-out. However, this does not release the member from his payment obligations.“ The consumer advocates criticized that this would give the member no opportunity to terminate the contract despite Sportuntauglichkeit, for example, due to a pregnancy. As the agency reports, the affected gym voluntarily changed its clauses without waiting for the court's decision.

No extraordinary termination with previously known illness
However, a gym contract can not be terminated due to a chronic illness if the condition was already known before the contract was signed and the customer did not enter into a separate agreement with the operator. This was decided by the Munich District Court several years ago (Az: 213 C 22567/11). Accordingly, an extraordinary cancellation of a gym due to a chronic illness is not possible if the contractor was already informed prior to the conclusion of the contract of the disease. (Ad)