Bekauri v. Georgia (preliminary objection)

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 151

April 2012

Bekauri v. Georgia (preliminary objection) - 14102/02

Judgment 10.4.2012 [Section II]

Article 35

Article 35-3

Abuse of the right of petition

Failure of applicant’s representatives to submit observations or to inform the Court of crucial events in his case: preliminary objection allowed

Facts – The applicant was convicted to life imprisonment for murdering a police officer. After communicating the application in 2005, the applicant’s lawyer did not submit any observations on his behalf despite being granted extensions of time for doing so. Even after the applicant appointed new lawyers to represent him in 2006, they failed to submit any observations. After the case was declared admissible in 2010, the Government informed the Court that the applicant’s sentence had been commuted to sixteen years’ imprisonment.             

Law – Article 35 § 3 (a): According to Rule 47 § 6 of the Rules of Court, applicants were under a continuous obligation to keep the Court informed of all important circumstances concerning their pending application. Applications might be rejected as abusive if they were knowingly based on untrue facts, or if incomplete or misleading information was provided. The applicant’s first representative’s actions were deplorable – not only had she failed to submit observations on the admissibility and merits of the case, she had also lost the case materials twice and failed to cooperate with the applicant’s new legal representatives. All of these omissions had resulted in an additional gratuitous workload for the Court. The representative’s negligent attitude had culminated in her failing to inform the Court of the commutation of the applicant’s prison sentence, which related to the very core of the subject-matter of his application. As regards the applicant’s new representatives, the Court could not accept that they had not learnt of the commutation of their client’s sentence in 2007 until the end of May 2010 as they claimed. In any event, it was for the applicant and his representatives to inform the Court of such crucial matters, but both had failed to do so. The Court therefore concluded that the conduct of the applicant and in particular of his first representative amounted to a “vexing manifestation of irresponsibility”, incompatible with the right of individual petition as provided for in the Convention. Such conduct also significantly impeded the proper functioning of the Court. The Court stressed that lawyers must show a high degree of professional prudence and meaningful cooperation with the Court by sparing it from the introduction of unmeritorious complaints and by meticulously abiding by all the relevant rules of procedure once proceedings were instituted.

Conclusion: preliminary objection upheld (abuse of the right of petition).

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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