LexBerg was instructed in 2024 to represent a group of 47 current and former employees of a Frankfurt-based financial services company who alleged systematic discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, national origin, and religion in the allocation of performance bonuses, promotion decisions, and access to leadership development programmes over a six-year period. The claimants, who came from 14 different countries of origin, had independently experienced treatment they believed was connected to their backgrounds, and had organised collectively after patterns emerged through internal discussion groups.

The claims were brought under the General Equal Treatment Act (AGG), which places the burden of proof on the employer once a claimant establishes facts indicating discrimination — a statutory framework that LexBerg identified as central to the litigation strategy. Individual claims ranged from €8,000 to €140,000, with the aggregate claim value exceeding €2.1 million. This was one of the largest coordinated employment discrimination mandates in LexBerg's employment law practice, requiring individual case management for each of the 47 claimants while simultaneously building the systemic pattern evidence that would engage the AGG burden-shifting mechanism.

LexBerg coordinated the 47 claimants as a structured group using a detailed data-gathering methodology that generated both individual case files and aggregate statistical evidence. The statistical pattern — once compiled — proved to be the decisive lever in moving the employer from a position of denial to settlement negotiations within weeks of disclosure.

The strategy ran four parallel tracks: individual AGG claim filing, statistical evidence development, test case disclosure proceedings, and employer negotiation — each designed to reinforce the others as the case progressed.

• A structured questionnaire administered to all 47 claimants, capturing bonus history, promotion timelines, performance records, and programme participation, revealed a statistically significant disparity between claimants from outside the EU and those from Germany and Western Europe in comparable roles.
• A statistician's expert report demonstrated that the average 23% bonus gap was significant at the 99% confidence level and could not be explained by legitimate performance differentials based on the employer's own appraisal data.
• AGG discrimination notices were served on the employer simultaneously with works council complaints, triggering the statutory response window and preserving all 47 claims from the limitation defence the employer initially raised.
• Targeted disclosure in proceedings for three test claimants produced internal emails in which senior managers had explicitly referenced claimants' national and cultural backgrounds in bonus recommendation discussions — the evidence that broke the employer's position.

Following disclosure of the internal emails, the employer entered settlement negotiations within three weeks. A global settlement was reached covering all 47 claimants, with total payments of €1.94 million — representing 92% of the aggregate claimed amount. All claimants who remained employed received written confirmation of continued employment without adverse consequence. As a non-financial condition of settlement, the employer agreed to implement mandatory unconscious bias training across all management levels, to establish an anonymous salary transparency reporting mechanism, and to appoint an independent equality monitor for a three-year period — structural changes with lasting impact beyond the financial outcome for the individual claimants.