Key legal question
Whether the valid income had to be indexed to the expected pension start in August 2009 for the income comparison.
Extracted holding
Yes. The valid income had to be adjusted to the 2009 wage level because the comparison must be based on temporally identical reference points and on the wage the insured would probably have earned as a healthy person at the earliest pension date.
Extracted reasoning
The employer's 2007 wage confirmation referred to the 2007 wage level and did not account for later nominal wage growth. The court held that the omission of indexation violated the duty to establish facts ex officio and made the lower court's finding non-binding.