Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 114
December 2008
Ada Rossi and Others v. Italy - 55185/08
Decision 16.12.2008 [Section II]
Article 34
Victim
Complaint by severely disabled persons concerning domestic-court decision permitting artificial nutrition and hydration of coma victim to be discontinued: lack of victim status
The father and guardian of a young woman who had been in a vegetative state for a number of years as a result of a road-traffic accident began court proceedings seeking authorisation to discontinue his daughter’s artificial nutrition and hydration, basing his arguments on his daughter’s personality and the ideas concerning life and dignity which she had allegedly expressed. In an order of 16 October 2007 remitting the case, the Court of Cassation stated that the judicial authority could authorise the discontinuation of nutrition if the person concerned was in a persistent vegetative state and if there was evidence that, had he been in possession of all his faculties, he would have opposed medical treatment. The Court of Appeal granted the requested authorisation on the basis of those two criteria.
Before the European Court, relying on Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention, the applicants (people with severe disabilities and associations defending the interests of such people) complained of the adverse effects that execution of the Court of Appeal’s decision was liable to have on them.
Inadmissible: In principle, it did not suffice for an applicant to claim that the mere existence of a law violated his rights under the Convention; it was necessary that the law should have been applied to his detriment. Furthermore, the exercise of the right of individual petition could not be used to prevent a potential violation of the Convention: only in highly exceptional circumstances could an applicant nevertheless claim to be a victim of a violation of the Convention owing to the risk of a future violation. The applicants had no direct family ties with the young woman. Furthermore, the domestic proceedings of which they criticised the outcome and feared the consequences had not affected them directly, as a decision of the Court of Appeal, by its very nature, concerned only the parties to the proceedings and the facts of the particular case. The applicants could therefore not be considered direct victims of the alleged violations. The question remained whether they could justifiably claim “potential victim” status. In this case the individual applicants had not met the requirement to produce reasonable and convincing evidence of the likelihood that a violation affecting them personally would occur, as the judicial decisions whose effects they feared had been adopted in relation to a specific set of circumstances concerning a third party. If the competent national judicial authorities were called upon to rule on the question of whether the applicants’ medical treatment should be continued, they could not disregard either the wishes of the persons concerned as expressed by their guardians – who had adopted a clear position in defence of their relatives’ right to life – or the opinions of the medical specialists. Just like the Court of Appeal in this case, the judicial authorities would be bound in their assessment of the facts by the criteria laid down by the Court of Cassation in its judgment of 16 October 2007. Accordingly, the individual applicants could not claim to be victims of a failure by the Italian State to protect their rights under Articles 2 and 3. As to the applicant legal entities, they were not directly affected by the Court of Appeal’s decision, which was not actually capable of having any impact on their activities and did not prevent them from pursuing their aims: incompatibility ratione personae.
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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