[Diskussionsbeitrag zur Einheit des Unternehmens als Richtlinie statt Liquidationswert, S. 414–415]

Emil Lederer: Enterprise Unity as a Valuation Guideline (1921)

This recorded commission intervention concerns compensation when enterprises are municipalized. Lederer challenges the wording of von Batocki’s motion: if dismantling yielded more than valuation by earnings, a judge could be obliged to adopt that normally unrealistic scenario. An exceptional possibility would thereby become a general compensation strategy, potentially raising compensation by 50 percent, especially where machinery and buildings inflated by the housing shortage played a major role.

The objection combines economic consequences with legislative fairness. Widespread dismantling would be economically harmful and, Lederer argues, would ultimately be prohibited by law. Why encourage owners to claim compensation on that basis?

In diesen exzeptionellen Fällen den Liquidationswert zugrunde zu legen, würde ich für bedenklich halten, und ich kann auch nicht einsehen, warum man immer nur die Kautel in das Gesetz einführt, die den Unternehmer schützt, aber keine Kautel, welche die kommunalisierenden Gemeinden schützen würde.

English translation: I would consider it questionable to use liquidation value as the basis in these exceptional cases, and I also cannot see why one always introduces only the safeguard into the law that protects the entrepreneur, but no safeguard that would protect the municipalizing municipalities.

Lederer concludes with a judicial guideline rather than a detailed valuation formula:

Ich würde es als gangbaren Mittelweg ansehen, wenn die Einheit des Unternehmens für den Richter als Richtlinie festgelegt würde.

English translation: I would regard it as a workable middle course if the unity of the enterprise were established as a guideline for the judge.

His central move is to make the enterprise’s unity, rather than its hypothetical dissolution, govern valuation while protecting municipalities as well as owners.