FOURTH SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 37051/05
Nazi BOLKVADZE
against Georgia
The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 19 January 2016 as a Committee composed of:
Krzysztof Wojtyczek, President,
Nona Tsotsoria,
Gabriele Kucsko-Stadlmayer, judges,
and Fatoş Aracı, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 20 July 2005,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. The applicant, Ms Nazi Bolkvadze, is a Georgian national, who was born in 1961 and lives in Batumi. She was represented before the Court by Mr M. Kavtaradze, a lawyer practising in Khelvachauri.
2. The Georgian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Mr D. Tomadze, of the Ministry of Justice.
A. The circumstances of the case
3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
4. On 1 February 2004 the Khelvachauri District Governor’s office and the applicant signed a temporary contract of employment which was to expire on 31 December 2004. Under the terms of the contract, the applicant would perform tasks of an administrative assistant, and the monthly salary agreed upon was 30 Georgian Laris (around 14 Euros).
5. On 14 May 2004 the employment contract was prematurely terminated at the applicant’s own request submitted in written form.
6. On 8 June 2004 the applicant instituted proceedings against the Governor’s office in the Khelvachauri District Court, claiming that she had been coerced into filing a resignation letter by the Governor himself.
7. On 15 July 2004 the applicant received a letter from the Governor informing her that her previous position was no longer vacant and offering her a contract for an alternative position within his office. The applicant turned down that offer.
8. On 23 July 2004 the Khelvachauri District Court dismissed the applicant’s action. It attached importance to the fact that the disputed letter of resignation dated 14 May 2004 had been written by the applicant, which, moreover, she herself did not deny. Consequently, given that the applicant had turned down the alternative position offered to her in June 2004, there was no need to grant her application to be reinstated in the post from which she had been dismissed. The court found that the applicant had produced no evidence of the coercion and pressure which she had alleged she had been subjected to by the authorities in order to get her to resign.
9. The applicant appealed against the decision, observing that the court had not carried out a legal assessment of the facts. Simultaneously, she requested that a number of witnesses be examined by the appellate court, whose statements could prove the fact that she had been victim of harassment at her workplace.
10. On 7 October 2004 the appellate court, after conducting an oral hearing during which some of the witnesses requested by the applicant were examined, upheld the decision of the first-instance court, on the ground that the applicant had herself tendered her resignation in a letter and that there was no evidence proving that her decision to resign had been the result of any kind of pressure.
11. The applicant lodged an appeal on points of law, repeating the same grounds and complaining that none of the courts having heard her case had taken the steps necessary in order to summon all of the witnesses whose names she had given.
12. The Supreme Court of Georgia dismissed the applicant’s appeal on 26 February 2005 in written proceedings. It found, among other things, that the failure to summon some of the witnesses named by the applicant did not mean that the appeal ruling was unfounded.
COMPLAINTS
13. Citing Articles 1, 6 § 1, 13, 14 and 17 of the Convention, the applicant complained that she had not received a fair trial before the national courts, which had only considered her case in a superficial manner.
THE LAW
14. Emphasising that the applicant had been a civil servant employed by the regional authority, the Government objected that her application was incompatible with Article 6 § 1 of the Convention given that the latter provision could not apply, under its civil limb, with respect to employment disputes between the State and its agents. As to the remainder of the application, it was manifestly ill-founded. Alternatively, the Government suggested that the whole of the application could also be declared inadmissible for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies, as the applicant, who had alleged harassment at workplace, never attempted to lodge a criminal complaint against the Governor.
15. Without replying to the Government’s objections as regards the admissibility of her application, the applicant maintained that the domestic courts had failed to carry out a profound examination of her case, in breach of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.
16. Setting aside the question of the applicability of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention to the applicant’s employment dispute with the regional authority (see Vilho Eskelinen and Others v. Finland [GC], no. 63235/00, §§ 61 and 62, ECHR 2007‑IV), the Court attaches significance to the fact that the stake of the impugned proceedings at the domestic level was of a petty nature. Thus, had the applicant even succeeded in her action against her former employer, the Governor’s office, she would have obtained the recognition of the fact that the termination of her employment contract on 14 May 2004 was unlawful. However, that contract was in any event of temporary duration and was to expire on 31 December 2004. With that in mind, the eventual pecuniary interest associated with the dispute was limited to the salary arrears that the applicant would have received for the period of her unlawful dismissal between 14 May and 31 December 2004. However, since the monthly pay envisaged by the contract in question was some EUR 14 (see paragraph 4 above), the possible pecuniary gain of the positive outcome of the court proceedings would be no more than EUR 112.
17. In this respect, the Court recalls that Article 35 of the Convention, as amended by Protocol No. 14, provides for a new admissibility requirement which reads as follows:
“3. The Court shall declare inadmissible any individual application submitted under Article 34 if it considers that: ...
(b) the applicant has not suffered a significant disadvantage, unless respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and the Protocols thereto requires an examination of the application on the merits and provided that no case may be rejected on this ground which has not been duly considered by a domestic tribunal.”
18. Having regard primarily to the petty amount of the pecuniary interest at stake in the instant case, the Court considers that the applicant cannot be said to have suffered a significant disadvantage (compare, amongst many others, with Bekauri and Others v. Georgia (dec.), no. 312/10, §§ 38‑45, 5 January 2010; Kudlička v. the Czech Republic (dec.), no. 21588/12, 3 March 2015; Kiousi v. Greece (dec.), no. 52036/09, 20 September 2011; Šumbera v. the Czech Republic (dec.), no. 48228/08, 21 February 2012; and also Gaftoniuc v. Romania (dec.), no. 30934/05, 22 February 2011).
19. Moreover, the Court observes that the wording of the applicant’s complaint relating to the alleged “superficial nature” of the judicial examination of her employment action cannot be said to concern an important question of principle, which might justify examining the present application on the merits (see also, on similar employment disputes with local authorities, and among many other examples, Penttinen v. Finland (dec.), no. 9125/07, 5 January 2010; and Feller v. Austria (dec.), no. 17169/06, 4 February 2010).
20. Lastly, the Court observes that the applicant’s court action was examined, according to the relevant domestic procedural law, by three levels of jurisdiction, during which she was able to present unimpededly her written and oral arguments, and since this particular safeguard clause under Article 35 § 3 (b) in fine of the Convention is not concerned with the outcome of the proceedings but requires only that the case be considered by domestic courts (compare with Uhl v. the Czech Republic (dec.), no. 1848/12, § 31, 25 September 2012), the requirement of “due consideration by a domestic tribunal” can be said to have been satisfied.
21. It follows that the present application is inadmissible under Article 35 § 3 (b) of the Convention since the applicant has not suffered a significant disadvantage, and thus must be rejected pursuant to Article 35 § 4 thereof.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 11 February 2016.
Fatoş AracıKrzysztof Wojtyczek
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy