There are (non-shady) firms that do exactly this for other areas (flight compensation, most notably).

There are some issues with contingency fees in German legal professional law. However, it can be argued that suing for these 5,000 EUR is just "collections", so it may be allowed.

The risk lies elsewhere: As I outlined in another comment, there is reason to believe that this may not stand on appeal, or at least that other courts in other parts of Germany may decide differently. As a result, it takes a lot of capital to keep all of these lawsuits going until the Federal Court of Justice or the ECJ have decided and there is legal certainty.

My understanding is that there is no 1-to-1 European equivalent to class action lawsuits in the USA.

There is a EU directive that allows for "representative action" but it's much narrower scope compared to what Americans are familiar with in class action.

Yes. But there's law firms who streamline such individual processes if the business case is actually large enough.

For example there's a law that says the airline needs to pay you 400€(?) if your flight is delayed by more than 2h if it's due to the airlines fault.

There's a company that handles these cases for 130€.

That's 270€ you get and you just need to enter some data.

or you can enter the same data into form provided by the airline. I did it once to SN and they paid up just fine.

Not my experience. Airlines BS you on why your flight delay or cancellation was legit so you need to take the legal route as they wipe their ass with your complaints.

The EU has really put their foot down when it comes to these claims. There is no legit delay or cancellation. Either I'm there on time or not. And if I'm late or the flight is cancelled then the carrier will reimburse. This seems o work pretty well these days is my experience.

Austrian Airlines din not honor my delay claim it citing "everting was right". Had to go to consumer protection.

I used to fly out out GBG which only has few flights to the intercontinental hubs per day. So it happened to me quite frequently that my incoming intercontinental flight was late by 1.5h which resulted in a 5-7h delay because I missed the connection. That entitles you to 600 euros. After my first 2 trips I quickly learned that for flights into Europe it's only European airlines that have to pay those fines (outbound flights it's everyone). I probably collected around between 4k-6k euros because it happened so often.

I never used one of the "collection agencies", because it's an incredibly easy process to do yourself. Yes some airlines try to wiggle out of it, but you just threaten them with going to arbitration (I think that's what it was? I've moved away from Europe several years ago), and show that you know the rules and they quickly let up, because IIRC they get fined (not just your compensation) if they get found to be in the wrong.

Lufthansa surprisingly directly issued 250 euros to my mom for a delayed flight after filling out the passenger name and flight number on a site provided by their chatbot, which also explained how to use a 20 Euro food voucher they provided directly. It was very well made imo.

I've done it twice and was paid the compensation, but both times were normal airlines, not budget carriers.

I only had to do it once, but they cooperated well.

Pedantry: the EU doesn't have a unified legal system.

Yeah, class action-style suits are probably coming, especially now that this ruling sets a precedent

AFAIK Germany (and most European countries) has civil law, so court rulings probably won't have as much of an impact as it would in countries like the US

> AFAIK Germany (and most European countries) has civil law

Most of the world, actually. Pure common law systems are just in CANZUKUS (and a few dozen of other minuscule former British colonies).

Not even all of the UK. Scotland is a hybrid system.

Once it reaches the highest court, it will set precedent. So there is no real difference in the end it just takes more time because no precedent is set in a lower court.