Swiss Civil Procedure Code
(Civil Procedure Code, CPC)

¹ The de­fend­ant may file a coun­ter­claim in the state­ment of de­fence, provided the claim made by the de­fend­ant is sub­ject to the same type of pro­ced­ure as the main ac­tion.

^1bisThe coun­ter­claim is also ad­miss­ible and shall be as­sessed to­geth­er with the main ac­tion in or­din­ary pro­ceed­ings if:

a.

the claim as­ser­ted is only to be as­sessed un­der the sim­pli­fied pro­ced­ure be­cause of the value in dis­pute, but the main ac­tion is to be as­sessed in the or­din­ary pro­ced­ure; or

b.

the coun­ter­claim seeks to es­tab­lish the non-ex­ist­ence of a right or leg­al re­la­tion­ship after only part of a claim arising from this right or leg­al re­la­tion­ship has been as­ser­ted in the main ac­tion and the sim­pli­fied pro­ced­ure there­fore only ap­plies be­cause of the value in dis­pute.¹⁴⁵

² If the value of the coun­ter­claim ex­ceeds the ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion of the court, the court shall trans­fer both claims to the court with great­er ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion.

³ If a coun­ter­claim is filed, the court shall set a dead­line for the plaintiff to file a writ­ten de­fence. The plaintiff may not an­swer the coun­ter­claim with a coun­ter­claim.