Published on 30 September 2024
SECOND SECTION
Application no. 30720/23
Ivanka BOSOTINA
against Croatia
lodged on 29 July 2023
communicated on 11 September 2024
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the alleged lack of impartiality of a judge of the second-instance court who had decided on the seemingly same legal issue in the consecutive enforcement and civil proceedings between the same parties which concerned the same facts.
In particular, the applicant instituted civil proceedings against her former employer seeking payment of her gross salary arrears for the period between 1 January 2009 and 23 May 2011. The courts awarded her the arrears sought but at the same time allowed the employer’s counterclaim seeking that she pays back a part of the statutory default interest paid to her in the earlier enforcement proceedings instituted on the basis of a judgment adopted in previous civil proceedings between the same parties.
Before the Court the applicant complains under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention that Judge I.D. who sat in the panel of the second-instance court in the civil proceedings complained of could not be considered impartial. That judge had ruled in the previous enforcement proceedings that she was not entitled to receive a part of the statutory default interest paid to her on the basis of an earlier judgment between the same parties. The applicant argues that, by deciding on the defendant’s counterclaim to pay back that sum in the subsequent civil proceedings, he was deciding on the same issue.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Was the Zadar County Court, which decided on the applicant’s appeal, impartial, as required by Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, given that Judge I.D., who sat in the panel of that court, had previously sat as a second-instance judge and delivered a decision against the applicant in the earlier enforcement proceedings between the same parties (see Stoimenovikj and Miloshevikj v. North Macedonia, no. 59842/14, §§ 34-43, 25 March 2021; Golubović v. Croatia, no. 43947/10, §§ 47-60, 27 November 2012; and Indra v. Slovakia, no. 46845/99, §§ 43-55, 1 February 2005)?