Once upon a time, they just kept bickering in public. But in the meantime Boris Becker and Oliver Pocher are also having a tangible argument in court. The former Wimbledon winner recently suffered a defeat. But he doesn’t want to let that sit on him.
Boris Becker does not want to give in and has challenged the court judgment in the legal dispute with Oliver Pocher. A spokesman for the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court confirmed that Becker’s legal counsel had appealed on Wednesday last week.
The former tennis star failed in mid-November with a civil lawsuit against the comedian at the Offenburg district court. The court argued at the time that Becker’s personal rights were not violated by a TV report from the RTL program “Pocher – dangerously honest” from October 2020. According to his lawyer, the 55-year-old demanded that the post be no longer broadcast and deleted from the Internet.
Neither Pocher nor Becker, who is in a British prison for concealing parts of his assets during his personal bankruptcy, had to appear in court in Offenburg, Baden. According to British media reports, Becker’s release and immediate deportation is imminent. So far, however, there has been no official confirmation of this. Becker has been in British custody for around seven and a half months.
According to court information from the Offenburg court, a call for donations was started in the controversial television program under the slogan “Make Boris rich again”. It can therefore be seen that Becker also received the three-digit euro amount – but without knowing about it. The money was hidden in a supposed fashion prize that was presented to him on the show. “The fact that the prize was only created for the purpose and awarded to Boris Becker in order to send him the collected cash amount unnoticed, he did not know when the award was handed over,” reported a spokeswoman at the time.
The court ruled that Pocher could not rely on Becker’s consent to the TV report, since the details of the planned distribution had not been communicated beforehand. However, the publication of the contribution is possible because it is about “portraits of contemporary history”. From the point of view of the Offenburg court, the interests of freedom of expression and freedom of broadcasting prevail in this case.
The judgment of mid-November is based on a weighing of different interests, explained Becker’s lawyer Samy Hammad. Freedom of expression is a “high legal interest” – but the “personal rights of Mr. Becker” would prevail. Hammad also did not comment on Becker’s possible impending deportation.
Pocher’s lawyer Patricia Cronemeyer, in turn, said on request: “The Offenburg district court has determined the facts in a binding manner, dismissed the lawsuit in its entirety and thus made the right decision in the end.” Now the other side must justify their appeal against the verdict. “In doing so, she is fundamentally forbidden from presenting new facts. But one thing is already clear: as soon as we have the appeal, we will apply for it to be rejected immediately,” explained Cronemeyer.
