Communicated on 15 December 2017
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 29422/17
Slobodan LAZAREVIĆ
against Bosnia and Herzegovina
lodged on 7 April 2017
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant is a national of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who was born in 1960 and lives in Doboj. He is represented before the Court by Mrs. I. Puzić-Obradović, a lawyer practising in Doboj.
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
A. The applicant’s case
On 18 July 2012 the applicant filed a civil claim seeking payment of some labour related rights, namely the severance pay (otpremnina), the vacation pay (regres) for 2011 and 2012, the per diem for food (topli obrok) for January, February, March, April and June 2012, the allowance for conserved food and heating fuel (zimnica i ogrev) and the contribution for pension fund (doprinosi za penziono i invalidsko osiguranje).
On 4 July 2013 the Doboj First Instance Court granted the applicant the right to severance pay, but rejected the remaining of his claim.
On 27 January 2014 the Doboj Court of Appeal upheld the decision on the merits and increased the amount awarded for costs and expenses.
On 16 June 2016 the Supreme Court of the Republika Srpska rejected the applicant’s appeal on points of law.
On 26 October 2016 the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina rejected the applicant’s appeal as manifestly ill-founded.
B. Comparable cases
The applicant alleges that in identical cases brought by his colleagues, the national courts ruled in favour of the claimants, granting them vacation pay and per diem for food. The decisions the applicant referred to in his case, before the Constitutional Court and this Court, are the following:
- Decision no. 85 0 Rs 034496 14 Rev, delivered by the Supreme Court of the Republika Srpska on 18 February 2015;
- Decision no. 85 0 Rs 040163 15 Rsž, delivered by the Doboj Court of Appeal on 15 July 2015;
- Decision no. 85 0 Rs 040166 15 Rsž, delivered by the Doboj Court of Appeal on 15 July 2015;
- Decision no. 85 0 Rs 040167 15 Rsž, delivered by the Doboj Court of Appeal on 17 August 2015;
- Decision no. 85 0 Rs 051194 15 Rs, delivered by the Doboj First Instance Court on 30 September 2016, and
- Decision no. 85 0 Rs 055370 15 Rs, delivered by the Doboj First Instance Court on 30 September 2016.
The applicant also invoked a decision of the Constitutional Court of 17 February 2016, lodged by his employer. In that case, the applicant’s employer complained against some decisions of national courts rendered in favour of the applicant’s colleagues in the same matter. The Constitutional Court rejected its appeal, arguing that the domestic courts were right when ordering the employer to pay his employees the labour related rights in question.
COMPLAINT
The applicant complains about the rejection of his civil claim by the domestic courts and the simultaneous acceptance by the same courts of identical claims filed by other plaintiffs under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. In the light of the applicant’s allegation that (i) the national courts, and (ii) the Constitutional Court, applied patently different case-law to identical civil claims, did the applicant have a fair hearing in the determination of his civil rights and obligations, in accordance with Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?
2. In the affirmative, was the principle of legal certainty implicit in this provision complied with (see, for example, Nejdet Şahin and Perihan Şahin v. Turkey [GC], no. 13279/05, §§ 49-58, 20 October 2011)?
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