Decision no. WA11/2011

On 20 May 2009, the Arbitration Panel had rejected an application for restitution of a property in the Second Municipal District of Vienna which had belonged to the Republic of Austria on the cut off day, 17 January 2001. The property had already been the subject of restitution proceedings which were concluded with a settlement in 1953. In this settlement, the heir of the former owner waived restitution in favor of a payment of 16,500 Schilling. In the view of the Arbitration Panel, this settlement had not been extremely unjust as there had not been any indications of a discrepancy in value or of a restriction of the freedom of contract of the then restitution claimant and present applicant, Kitty W.

In her application for the reopening of proceedings, Vivian F., the daughter of Kitty W., who had since passed away, enclosed an affidavit in which she stated that her mother had been traumatized by the events of the National Socialist period. Furthermore, she had had great financial difficulties and had only consented to the disadvantageous settlement for this reason. When the freedom of contract is restricted to such a large extent, as had been established in the case of Kitty W., a relatively small discrepancy in value between the settlement amount and the hypothetical result of a decision by the Restitution Commission was sufficient for the settlement to be classified as extremely unjust. The Arbitration Panel had already determined that this discrepancy in value existed in its first decision.

The Arbitration Panel rejected the application for the reopening of proceedings: although the statement of Vivian F. contained previously unknown facts, it could not be proven that these had a negative impact on Kitty W. in the restitution proceedings. In particular, it is not known what financial consequences the restitution of the property would have had for the restitution claimant as neither the value of the property, nor the balance from the earnings and expenditure could be determined in the original proceedings. Renewed attempts by the Arbitration Panel to carry out research in this regard
were also unsuccessful. There was and is therefore no evidence for the discrepancy in value asserted by the applicant.