No legal presumption for digital recorded delivery proof

Germany’s Federal Labour Court upheld the dismissal of an employer’s appeal: a dismissal on grounds of frequent illness was invalid because the employer could not prove that a mandatory reintegration meeting had ever been properly invited. A digital delivery scan from Deutsche Post was not enough.

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Dismissal fails because a letter’s arrival couldn’t be proven

On 7 May 2026, Germany’s Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht, BAG, ref. 2 AZR 184/25) rejected the employer’s appeal and confirmed the judgment of the Hamburg Regional Labour Court (Landesarbeitsgericht Hamburg) of 14 July 2025 (ref. 4 SLa 26/24): a dismissal on health grounds was invalid. The decisive reason was that the employer could not prove that an invitation to a statutory reintegration meeting had actually reached the employee. If you have just received a dismissal citing illness and there is any doubt about whether such a meeting was properly offered, this ruling gives you strong arguments.

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Background: Lots of sick days, one disputed letter

The Federal Labor Court has not yet issued its reasoning. The lower court had established the following facts:

An employee working as a refuse collector since 2015 had repeatedly been off sick – colds, stomach bugs, back pain, a commuting accident. In December 2023 his employer, a Hamburg waste management company, gave him notice on the grounds of his generally high susceptibility to illness. German employment law (Kündigungsschutzgesetz, KSchG) requires that a dismissal for health reasons be a last resort: before pulling the trigger, the employer must have genuinely explored whether the job could be adapted to keep the employee in work. This exploration happens in a structured process called betriebliches Eingliederungsmanagement (bEM) – roughly a „workplace reintegration process” – which is mandatory under § 167 SGB IX whenever someone has been off sick for more than six weeks within a twelve-month period. Think of it as a formal sit-down between employer, employee, and if applicable the works council, to look for solutions before anyone gets fired. The employer claimed to have invited the employee to a bEM in October 2023 via Einwurf-Einschreiben – a type of German tracked letter where the postman drops it in your letterbox and scans a barcode rather than getting a signature. The employee denied ever receiving it. The court-summoned postal worker remembered nothing, and the digital delivery record printed from Deutsche Post’s tracking system was not enough to establish a legal presumption (Beweis des ersten Anscheins) that the letter had actually landed in the right letterbox. Without that proof, the employer bore an elevated burden to show that no milder alternative to dismissal existed – a burden it did not meet.