The German Lawyer Taking On The Vaccine Industry — By Any Means Necessary

HAMBURG — One iconic photograph of Marco Rogert, taken after he brought a claim for declaratory judgement against Volkswagen in September 2019, shows the lawyer wearing a silk tie and his black gown, with a victorious smile on his face. It was the first day of the hearing, Sept. 30 2019, and Rogert was already well on his way to making a fortune: five months later, the parties agreed damages to be paid to around 260,000 plaintiffs, and the car manufacturer paid out tens of millions in expenses and fees for the four lawyers.

Now the 50-year-old is looking to repeat this success. The number one topic on his Düsseldorf-based office’s website is the adverse effects of vaccination. Rogert is representing people who are experiencing difficulties walking since their COVID vaccination. Some cannot even cross the street without getting out of breath, while others have an irregular heartbeat.

“All in all there are 3,048 claimants,” he says. “Most of them have been waiting in vain for decisions from the social welfare office or help promised by the Health Minister, and now they are seeking compensation from the manufacturers of the mRNA vaccines.” From BioNtech and Moderna, that means.

Genuine sufferers or anti-vaxxers?

They have every right to take their case to court, but there is a problem. The claims that have emerged so far, over 400 of them, do not look like traditional healthcare cases. They hardly mention those affected, and dedicate more space to expressing fundamental concerns about mRNA vaccines, which Rogert believes should never have been licensed.

The written complaint, which Rogert shared with Die Welt, is mostly a summary of the kinds of arguments against mRNA vaccines that are doing the rounds among conspiracy theorists online. One mentions “VAIDS”, an unfounded idea that the vaccine could “switch off” the immune system by contaminating the body with HIV particles. Large swathes of the document read as if it not genuine sufferers but anti-vaxxers who are taking BioNtech and Moderna to court. Why is that?

Rogert actually specializes in transport law. No, he says in a video interview, the world of medicine is not his domain, but he has learned to read up on new subjects quickly, and his chambers is being advised by lawyers who specialize in healthcare.

So far, there has been no recognized proof of post-vac syndrome.

But he can’t quite remember the name of the “strange little balls” that are used to deliver the mRNA in the COVID vaccine: lipid nanoparticles. “I just can’t remember these words,” he says with a wink. This gap in his knowledge actually makes people in his target group trust him more, as his plaintiffs are similarly unfamiliar with the technical terms.

Rogert may seem naïve, but in fact he is a keen strategist. He knows how to reach a vast number of people online: Anyone who types “adverse effects of vaccination” into Google will see a link to his chambers’ website — not a real search result, but a paid advert. All users need to do is upload their vaccination card, then they are a few clicks away from becoming a plaintiff. It could hardly be any easier. His strategy also includes hiring a PR consultant, who suggested that Die Welt conduct an interview with Rogert.

The lawyer’s website says the value in dispute for each case is at least 150,000 euros. This means that, for every case that works its way through the courts to Germany’s Federal High Court, he could charge up to 20,000 euros. Multiply this by the number of plaintiffs and he is looking at 60 million euros in potential earnings.

And he is not the only one who stands to profit. Since 2007, Rogert has been working in partnership with Tobias Ulbrich, another lawyer specializing in transport and shipping law. In February 2020, the two of them achieved their lucrative settlement with Volkswagen. Shortly afterwards, the coronavirus pandemic was declared and, as the situation developed, Ulbrich seems to have strayed into dangerous territory.

Building blocks of a conspiracy

In mid-June 2021, he brought a charge to the Chief Federal Prosecutor. The word “vaccine” was in quotation marks – because for Ulbrich it is a weapon disguised as medicine. He demanded that Germany’s highest prosecutor charge all those who “developed the experimental mRNA vaccine at BioNtech/Pfizer” or “approved the vaccination and administered it to uninformed people” with genocide.

The document is 191 pages of quasi-scientific fabrications, which paint BioNtech’s vaccine as the final building block in a sinister conspiracy to “decimate the German population, reducing it to 27,000 people”. The instrument of this plan: Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The leaders of the plot: “the Rothschilds”.

This document should have been reason enough to start proceedings against Ulbrich himself. The Nazi propaganda film The Rothschilds held up the famous banking family as an example of the supposed evil of Jewish people around the world. Contemporary anti-Semites refer instead to “globalists”, and they include Gates in that category. The lawyer sounds like a popular agitator — and also like someone suffering from paranoia. “If they really want to investigate, my family and I will need personal security,” he says. The Chief Federal Prosecutor decided against an investigation, on either side.

One year later, this document has turned into the project to claim damages. On the Presseportal PR website, the chambers now refers to itself as “specializing in compensation cases to do with adverse effects of vaccines”. They claim that the lawyers have been made aware of “a large number of individual cases” in which plaintiffs began to suffer from an auto-immune disease, VAIDS, after being vaccinated.

There is not one peer-reviewed article that proves a significant rise in infections

“Studying countless respected medical journals led us to the realization that those affected by the symptoms described must all have an abnormal blood composition.” However, there is not one peer-reviewed article that proves a significant rise in infections among those who received the mRNA vaccine – the method of choice for measuring issues with the immune system.

“He has looked into it very deeply,” Rogert says today about his partner, “since the announcement that mRNA vaccines had been approved. He is the one in our team who understands all the scientific details.” The chambers has a list of 3,000 key points, which lays out all the information that Ulbrich considers relevant. Rogert shares it with Die Welt.

Sometimes the issue is claimed to be that different molecular particles were used than those that are found in the virus, while sometimes it is that these particles are similar to the virus. Rogert is the one who gives interviews, while Ulbrich rallies the skeptics on social media. After the charge he brought to the Chief Federal Prosecutor, the far-right fringes see him as a lone warrior against the forces of evil.

But they are not the only ones he’s scoring points with: Ulbrich also gets a warm reception on X when he publishes data “from his own analysis”, such as vaccine batches that he believes are dangerous. Many of his 15,000 followers express their gratitude, while others react in shock, posting photos of their own vaccine passports with panic emojis. Some may have considered launching a complaint themselves.

Unclear consequences of vaccines

One of the plaintiffs that Rogert already represents is a schoolgirl who started to suffer from dizzy spells after her second vaccination. On some days she cannot walk any more, according to the document. Another client is experiencing speech difficulties.

Dizziness and “brain fog”: These are symptoms of an illness that doesn’t yet have an official name, but is being referred to by sufferers and doctors as post-vac syndrome. What plays into Rogert and Ulbrich’s hands is the fact that, amid the euphoria of the first vaccine campaign, it was very difficult for those affected to get help. There are some reports of doctors refusing to register such symptoms as consequences of vaccination, or saying straight out that those affected must be suffering from a psychological illness. They felt abandoned – and now they are potential plaintiffs.

The fact that so many people now believe such conspiracy theories is also a consequence of the pandemic.

In fact, the signs point to an auto-immune problem. Not one that “switches off the immune system”, but that affects circulation. According to some theories, it is a chronic inflammatory reaction caused by the virus protein that is produced after vaccination. So far, there has been no recognized proof of post-vac syndrome. Many more doctors are starting to believe the sufferers, while others think it is something else, the result of an infection. Therefore experts may disagree when called to give evidence at the hearing.

Unprecedented trial

When asked how, amid such uncertainty, he can prove it was the vaccine that caused these symptoms, Rogert replies with a smile: “I don’t have to. I only have to show that the vaccine is a more likely explanation for the illness than any other possible causes.”

“That is essentially true, a small probability is enough,” explains Singen-based lawyer Martin Huff, who works for the German consumer rights association and teaches at the University of Konstanz. Huff warns: Because there is neither a consensus among scientists nor any legal precedent around post-vac syndrome, the vaccine damages claims may well work their way through all the courts and only be decided in the Federal High Court or the Federal Constitutional Court. “A long, winding path. Very expensive.”

Any plaintiff who loses the case will also be liable for the court costs and the vaccine manufacturers’ legal fees – which, given that the value in dispute is 150,000 euros, could be more than 60,000 euros. While the outcome is uncertain for the plaintiffs, for the lawyers it is win-win. Whatever the result, they are entitled to their fees.

Huff’s advice is that anyone who doesn’t have either legal costs insurance or the right to legal aid should stay well clear. And anyone who does want to take the risk would do better to rely on statutory legal counsel rather than on Rogert and Ulbrich. “If you just go through a call center, the insurers can demand the fee back from the lawyers, who can then demand the money from the plaintiff,” explains Huff.

Confronted with these accusations, Rogert denies that he is neglecting his duties to the plaintiffs. He says that in total five colleagues are handling the vaccine cases, and each plaintiff gets individual advice and care. And his aim is to expose serious failures on the part of the responsible authorities, as was the case in the diesel scandal.

Lax monitoring?

In Germany, the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) is responsible for monitoring vaccines, and Rogert accuses the PEI of “obstructing evidence”. And unlike many others, this argument is not so easy to refute: The PEI’s safety report from October 2021, which he uses to prove this, is indeed open to criticism.

This report says that 1,254 deaths were reported to the Federal Institute in the first half of 2021 – the first months of the vaccination campaign. The Paul Ehrlich Institute wrote that the difference between these figures and the death rate reported by the German Federal Statistical Office in 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic, does not represent a “higher mortality rate overall”.

But if you look at these figures, it seems odd. It looks like the vaccines saved more lives than were claimed by COVID infections before. While in the general population 665 people in 100,000 died in this half-year, the figure was 1.3 people for those who receive the BioNtech vaccine. And for those who received the Moderna vaccine, it was only 0.3.

But that can’t be true. Indeed, there is an explanation. The basis for the calculations is wrong. The figures are not actually comparable. The Federal Statistical Office records every death, whereas the Institute only records deaths that a relative or doctor thought might be related to the vaccine. Therefore the PEI’s figures only show the deaths that were most relevant to its analysis – those that took place shortly after the person was vaccinated.

These vaccines have harmful effects much more often than anyone wants to admit

From a legal perspective, this blind spot may prove decisive in the wave of vaccine-related cases. In a court room, it doesn’t matter how good the arguments are overall. If there is one compelling reason, that is enough.

There is one important rule that all lawyers in Germany must abide by: They are not allowed to spread false information, at least not “knowingly”. Many of the arguments that Rogert is using against mRNA vaccines are, however, demonstrably false – for example, the idea that the vaccines are dangerous due to being contaminated with bacteria DNA. He mentions this again and again in our interview.

It is true that there is some remnant of this kind of DNA left over from the production process, but it is not harmful. Every time someone gets a cold, they have millions more of these particles in their body, and our immune cells are used to dealing with them. If Rogert had asked any virologists, they could have explained that to him.

Instead, the lawyer takes care to maintain an appearance of ignorance. This is clear not only when he struggles to remember the name of the “little balls”, but also when he later sends us articles from COVID-denying newspapers and apparently doesn’t know whether that is “a good source”. Perhaps this is also a deliberate strategy. Someone who is so unsure about the facts can easily claim afterwards that he said something untrue because he didn’t know any better.

Rumors of powerful opponents

Towards the end of the interview, Rogert’s demeanour changes. He stops smiling. He asks if we know why the PEI calculated the deaths wrongly. Because the German government did not want to take responsibility for it. The lawyer is convinced “that these vaccines have harmful effects much more often than anyone wants to admit.”

Then he mentions the judges, claiming they have acted illegally when it comes to these cases. “Our impression is that they are under enormous political pressure.” As evidence, he tells us about a call from an informant from a major German civil court. He says Die Welt shouldn’t write exactly what was discussed, but it was allegedly about how the court’s judgements are a fix. No, Rogert doesn’t mention the name Rothschild or speak about globalists, but it sounds as if he too believes in the machinations of a shadowy elite.

The fact that so many people now believe such conspiracy theories is also a consequence of the pandemic. One that horrified onlookers cannot bring before any court in the world to claim damages.