The Federal Supreme Court upheld the acquittal. It first held that a judicial prohibition under Art. 258 CPC constitutes a specific form of possessory protection backed by criminal sanctions. What is protected is the actual control exercised over real property. Such a prohibition may therefore prohibit, in particular, interferences with possession such as unauthorised entry, parking or other disturbances. By contrast, rules governing the use of property that go beyond the protection of possession are not covered.

Of particular significance, the Federal Supreme Court did not rule out judicial prohibitions on traffic areas as a matter of principle. For road traffic law purposes, the parking area at the indoor swimming pool qualifies as a public road because it is accessible to an indeterminate group of swimming-pool visitors. At the same time, it forms part of the City of Zurich's administrative assets. This does not, as a matter of principle, prevent the owner from protecting its possession under civil law by means of a judicial prohibition. Road traffic law and civil-law possessory protection pursue different purposes in this respect and may apply concurrently.

The decisive limitation, however, lies in the content of the prohibition. Art. 258 CPC is not intended to enforce monetary claims by means of criminal sanctions. The mere failure to pay a parking fee does not interfere with the owner's actual control over the property. An interference with possession may arise, for example, where a vehicle is parked without authorisation or remains parked beyond the permitted period. The non-payment of the fee as such, however, does not constitute an interference with possession.

Accordingly, the Federal Supreme Court held that parking fees cannot be secured by criminal sanctions simply by making payment a condition of a judicial prohibition. Where a fee is to be enforced, other instruments are available, such as technical access restrictions or civil-law claims. The appeal by the Zurich Senior Public Prosecutor's Office was therefore dismissed.

The decision is significant beyond the specific parking dispute. It makes clear that Art. 258 CPC serves exclusively to protect possession and may not be used to give criminal-law backing to contractual or other payment obligations.

For owners and operators of car parks, commercial premises and other publicly accessible properties, this means that judicial prohibitions must carefully distinguish between an actual interference with possession and mere conditions of use. Criminal sanctions may be imposed only for conduct that actually interferes with the protected possession. A breach of fee rules or other conditions of use is not sufficient.

The decision is persuasive in particular because it draws a clear distinction between possessory protection and the enforcement of monetary claims. The threat of criminal sanctions attached to a judicial prohibition must not be used to lend additional force to private-law or public-law payment obligations. Otherwise, an instrument designed to protect possession would effectively be converted into a debt-collection mechanism backed by criminal sanctions.

This is likely to be relevant to the private management of parking facilities by specialised providers. Their business models are in some cases based on charging so-called administrative or inconvenience fees for breaches of parking rules and reinforcing those claims by referring to the criminal sanctions that may follow from a breach of a judicial prohibition. The present decision limits that approach where the objection is not to unauthorised parking as such, but merely to the non-payment of a parking fee.

At the same time, the Federal Supreme Court makes clear that the classification of a traffic area as a public road within the meaning of the Swiss Road Traffic Act does not, in itself, preclude civil-law possessory protection. What remains decisive is the specific conduct that is prohibited and the legal interest that the prohibition is intended to protect. This distinction is likely to be of considerable practical importance for the drafting and enforcement of judicial prohibitions concerning car parks and other publicly accessible areas.

Source: Federal Supreme Court, judgment 6B_998/2024 of 15 June 2026.