SECOND SECTION
DECISION ON REQUEST FOR REVISION
Application no. 36983/97
by Pieter Jelle HAAS
against the Netherlands
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 7 September 2004 as a Chamber composed of:
MrJ.-P. Costa, President,
MrL. Loucaides,
MrC. Bîrsan,
MrK. Jungwiert,
MrV. Butkevych,
MrsW. Thomassen,
MrsA. Mularoni, judges,
and Mrs S. Dollé, Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged with the European Commission of Human Rights on 20 December 1995,
Having regard to the judgment delivered on 13 January 2004;
Having regard to the applicant’s request on 23 June 2004 for the revision of the judgment, pursuant to Rule 80 of the Rules of Court;
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
The applicant, Mr Pieter Jelle Haas, is a Netherlands national who was born in 1964 and lives in Hilversum. He was represented before the Court by Mr A.W.M. Willems, a lawyer practising in Amsterdam.
In his original application, the applicant claimed to be the unrecognized illegitimate child of his putative father, from whom he was unable to inherit. He alleged a violation of the Articles 14 and 8 of the Convention taken together.
In a judgment delivered on 13 January 2004, the Court held that there had been no violation of those provisions because Article 8 was not applicable in the circumstances of the case since it was not established that the applicant was the son of the putative father.
After the judgment it appeared from a report of the Forensic Laboratory for DNA Research, dated 16 February 2004, that “it [was] more than 100,000 times more likely that the saliva on the gummed edge [of certain envelopes] came from the biological father of [the applicant] than from another man chosen at random”.
On 5 April 2004 the applicant informed the Court of the factual developments which had occurred after its judgment and requested that his case be referred to the Grand Chamber (Article 43 § 1 of the Convention). On 14 June 2004 a Panel of five judges of the Grand Chamber (Article 43 § 2) decided not to accept this request.
On 23 June 2004 the applicant asked the Court to revise the judgment of 13 January 2004.
THE LAW
Rule 80 of the Rules of Court provides, in relevant part:
“A party may, in the event of the discovery of a fact which might by its nature have a decisive influence and which, when a judgment was delivered, was unknown to the Court and could not reasonably have been known to that party, request the Court ... to revise that judgment. ...”
Based on the Forensic Laboratory’s above-mentioned report, the applicant states as fact that he has now proved that he is the son of the late Mr P. His proposed ground for revision is that, had the Court known this for certain, it would have been able to find that “family life”, attracting the applicability of Article 8 together with Article 14, in fact existed, and that those provisions had been violated.
However, the Court finds that the Forensic Laboratory’s report, which was established after the Court’s judgment, is not a fact which “was unknown to the Court", which has since been discovered, and "could not reasonably have been known to the applicant", within the meaning of Rule 80. It is a fact which came into existence only after the Court’s judgment.
For these reasons, the Court by a majority
Decides to reject the applicant’s request for revision.
S. DolléJ.-P. Costa
RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy