Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 143
July 2011
Georgel and Georgeta Stoicescu v. Romania - 9718/03
Judgment 26.7.2011 [Section III]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for private life
Non-fatal attack on elderly woman by stray dogs in city where problem was rife: violation
Facts – In 2000 the second applicant, an elderly woman, was attacked, bitten and knocked to the ground by a pack of stray dogs in a residential area of Bucharest. Following the incident, she started to suffer from amnesia and from shoulder and thigh pains and had difficulty walking. She lived in a constant state of anxiety and never left the house for fear of another attack. By 2003 she had become totally immobile.
She brought an action in damages against the local mayor’s office. Although a district court found in her favour on the merits her action was dismissed on appeal on the technical ground that the mayor’s office was not the proper defendant as it was the municipal council which exercised authority over the animal control agency. A subsequent action against the municipal council failed on the grounds that the animal control agency was by then defunct and responsibility for stray dogs had reverted to the mayor’s office.
Since the mid-1990s the national and international media have regularly reported on the large number of stray dogs in Romania and attacks resulting in serious injuries or even death to passers-by. By 2000 the population of stray dogs in the city of Bucharest alone numbered some 200,000. In March 2001 the mayor of Bucharest decided to have recourse to euthanasia in the light of statistics indicating that the population of stray dogs in the city had doubled between 1996 and 2001 and that in 2000 some 22,000 persons had required medical care following attacks.
Law – Article 8: The Court had to determine whether the State authorities had failed to comply with their positive obligation to protect the second applicant’s physical and psychological integrity. It was common ground that the authorities had broad and detailed information on the problem of the large number of stray dogs in the city of Bucharest and the danger they represented. Even before the attack on the second applicant in 2000 regulations had been in force providing for the creation of specific structures to control the population of strays. These regulations were modified several times after the attack. In 2001 the authorities acknowledged the special situation and introduced legislation providing for stray dogs to be captured and either neutered or euthanised. However, the situation remained critical, with several thousand people being injured in the city of Bucharest alone. In its judgment of 19 June 2001 the county court found that the animal control agency, a public body, had not taken all necessary measures to avoid endangering the lives of the population and to preserve their health and physical integrity. That judgment was, however, quashed for procedural reasons and the second applicant’s subsequent attempts to secure appropriate redress had also failed.
Apart from arguing that society in general should bear responsibility for the situation of stray dogs in Romania, the Government had not provided any indication as to the concrete measures taken by the authorities at the time to properly implement the existing legislative framework with a view to addressing the serious problem of public health and threat to the physical integrity of the population represented by a large number of stray dogs. Nor had they indicated whether the applicable regulations and practices were capable of providing appropriate redress for victims. That situation seemed to be continuing. In the particular circumstances of the case, by failing to take sufficient measures to address the issue of stray dogs and to provide appropriate redress to the second applicant for her injuries, the authorities had failed to discharge their positive obligation to secure respect for the applicant’s private life.
Conclusion: violation (six votes to one).
Article 6 § 1: The dismissal of a court action as a result of the interpretation of the legal capacity of a defendant authority, compared with that of one of its departments or executive bodies, could raise an issue under Article 6 § 1. Under the relevant legislation, the mayor’s offices were the executive bodies of the municipal councils, the latter being responsible for setting up services for stray dogs and the former for implementing specific policy. Since in the instant case the animal control agency’s stamp had borne the name of the mayor’s office, it had been reasonable for the second applicant to believe that the mayor’s office had legal standing in the matter. In the context of local organisational changes in the field of animal control, shifting onto the second applicant the duty of identifying the authority against which she should bring her claim was disproportionate and failed to strike a fair balance between the public interest and her rights. She had thus been denied a clear, practical opportunity of claiming compensation.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 9,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
(Compare Berü v. Turkey, no. 47304/07, 11 January 2011, Information Note no. 137)
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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