Question juridique clé
Whether party costs had to be allocated solely according to the monetary success ratio.
Solution extraite
Not necessarily. In a labor case with an unrepresented, legally untrained employee who overclaimed because of a mistaken legal view, the court may take into account that he prevailed completely on a central issue that caused most of the litigation effort.
Motifs extraits
Although the employee succeeded only to about one third in monetary terms, the decisive dispute concerned the validity of the defendants' notice of termination, on which he fully prevailed. His erroneous view that the termination was void and that three months' salary were owed was rejected. The cost decision therefore need not follow the arithmetical success ratio alone.