SECOND SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 67874/13
Bernd Karl KRUSE
against Hungary
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 28 January 2014 as a Committee composed of:
Nebojša Vučinić, President,
András Sajó,
Egidijus Kūris, judges,
and Stanley Naismith, Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 24 October 2013,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
The applicant, Mr Bernd Karl Kruse, is a German national, who was born in 1939 and lives in Rheinhalle, Germany. He was represented before the Court by Mr K. Wenczel, a lawyer practising in Budapest.
A. The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
The applicant initiated civil proceedings in Hungary against a third person, seeking the payment of 350,000 euros under the title of reimbursement of debt, or alternatively compensation for damages for unlawful enrichment.
On 25 May 2011 the Veszprém County Regional Court found for the applicant. This decision was upheld by the Győr Court of Appeal, acting as a second-instance court, on 11 January 2012.
Following a petition for review lodged by the respondent, the Supreme Court dismissed as premature the applicant’s action as a whole on 30 September 2013, holding in essence that the contractual conditions for the applicant’s claim were not yet met.
COMPLAINT
Relying on Article 6 of the Convention, the applicant maintains that, in his view, the Supreme Court did not examine his claim under the title of compensation for damages for unlawful enrichment, but only under the title of reimbursement of debt, thus depriving him of his right to have his civil case heard.
THE LAW
In so far as the applicant’s complaint may be understood to concern the result of the proceedings before the domestic courts or the interpretation of the parties’ pleas or of domestic law, the Court reiterates that, according to Article 19 of the Convention, its duty is to ensure the observance of the engagements undertaken by the Contracting Parties to the Convention. In particular, it is not its function to deal with errors of fact or law allegedly committed by a national court unless and in so far as they may have infringed rights and freedoms protected by the Convention. Moreover, while Article 6 of the Convention guarantees the right to a fair hearing, it does not lay down any rules on the admissibility of evidence or the way it should be assessed, which are therefore primarily matters for regulation by national law and the national courts (see García Ruiz v. Spain [GC], no. 30544/96, § 28, ECHR 1999‑I). In the present case, the applicant’s claims were duly considered by three judicial instances and finally dismissed as premature. The fact that the Supreme Court rejected the claims altogether as premature does not disclose any appearance that the courts lacked impartiality or that the proceedings were otherwise unfair or arbitrary. The application is manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention and must be rejected, pursuant to Article 35 § 4.
For these reasons, the Court unanimously
Declares the application inadmissible.
Stanley NaismithNebojša Vučinić
RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy