THIRD SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 1850/07
Valentina Ivanovna MIKHAYLENKO
against Russia
The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting on 27 June 2017 as a Committee composed of:
Luis López Guerra, President,
Dmitry Dedov,
Jolien Schukking, judges,
and Fatoş Aracı, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 10 December 2006,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. The applicant, Ms Valentina Ivanovna Mikhaylenko, is a Russian national, who was born in 1969 and lives in Stavropol.
2. The Russian Government (“the Government”) were represented initially by Mr G. Matyushkin, the Representative of the Russian Federation to the European Court of Human Rights, and then by his successor in that office, Mr M. Galperin.
A. The circumstances of the case
3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
4. In 2004 the applicant along with other twenty-four plaintiffs brought proceedings against the military authorities claiming additional compensation for her military service in the Chechen Republic.
5. On 24 February 2004 the Leninskiy District Court found for the applicant and awarded 352,605 Russian roubles. The judgment was not appealed against and became final.
6. On 2 February 2005 the judgment was fully enforced.
7. On 19 May 2005 the Leninskiy District Court granted the military authorities request and quashed the judgment of 24 February 2004 on the grounds of newly discovered circumstances and ordered the reversal of the execution. The court, in particular, found that the commander of the military unit had not issued any power of attorney to represent the military unit before the courts. It appears that the applicant did not repay the sum paid to her under the judgment of 24 February 2004.
8. On 19 November 2007 the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the North Osetia-Alania granted the supervisory review application lodged by one of the plaintiffs, quashed the judgment of 19 May 2005 and remitted the case for fresh consideration.
9. On 29 January 2008, in the course of the subsequent proceedings, the Leninskiy District Court upheld the findings of the judgment of 24 February 2004 and dismissed the military authorities’ request to reopen the proceedings.
B. Relevant domestic law
10. The Code of Civil Procedure (“CCivP”), as in force at the material time, provided as follows:
Article 392. Grounds for re-consideration of final judgments
“[Judgments] which have come into force may be re-considered on the basis of newly-discovered circumstances. The grounds for re-consideration ... shall be:
1. significant circumstances which were not and could not have been known to the party who applies for re-consideration.”
COMPLAINT
11. The applicant complained about a violation of the principle of legal certainty on account of the quashing on the grounds of newly discovered circumstances of binding and enforceable judgment in her favour. She invoked Article 6 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention.
THE LAW
12. The Government submitted that the domestic judgments in the applicant’s favour had been executed in full prior to being quashed and they were not required to reimburse them afterwards. Consequently, the Government considered that the applicant had not suffered any significant disadvantage as a result of the domestic judgments in their favour being quashed.
13. The applicant failed to submit any comments in this regard.
14. Article 35 of the Convention provides as follows:
“3. The Court shall declare inadmissible any individual application submitted under Article 34 if it considers that:
...
(b) the applicant has not suffered a significant disadvantage, unless respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and the Protocols thereto requires an examination of the application on the merits and provided that no case may be rejected on this ground which has not been duly considered by a domestic tribunal.”
15. The Court notes at the outset that it has already addressed similar issue in the case Samoylenko and Others v. Russia (dec.) (no. 58068/13, 7 March 2017). It thus does not see any ground to depart from the findings in that case.
16. The Court notes that the main aspect of this criterion is whether the applicant has suffered any significant disadvantage. The absence of any such disadvantage can be based on criteria such as the financial impact of the matter in dispute or the importance of the case for the applicant (see Adrian Mihai Ionescu v. Romania (dec.), no. 36659/04, § 33, 1 June 2010, with further references).
17. In the present case, the applicant does not dispute that the payments due under the initial judgment of 24 February 2004 were made to her in full. Although the judgment in the applicant’s favour was quashed, in the subsequent proceedings the domestic courts upheld the findings of initial judgment and dismissed the military authorities’ request to overrule it (see paragraphs 8 and 9 above). Moreover the applicant did not reimburse the amount already paid to her. Consequently, the financial implications of the proceedings could not present any particular hardship for the applicant.
18. In these circumstances, the Court finds that the applicant did not suffer any “significant disadvantage”.
19. As to the question whether respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and the Protocols thereto requires an examination of the application on the merits, the Court points out that it has already held that respect for human rights does not require it to continue the examination of an application when, for example, the relevant law has changed and similar issues have been resolved in other cases before it (see Léger v. France (striking out) [GC], no. 19324/02, § 51, 30 March 2009).
20. The present case raises a problem of quashing of the final judgment in the applicant’s favour on the grounds of newly discovered circumstances, an issue which has already been addressed by the Court on several occasions (see Pravednaya v. Russia, no. 69529/01, §§ 27-42, 18 November 2004; Botskalev and Rostovtseva and 42 other “Privileged pensioners” cases v. Russia, nos. 22666/08 and 42 others, § 15, 26 November 2009; and most recent Dolbin v. Russia [Committee], no. 18451/04, §§ 19-21, 19 April 2016). The examination of this application on the merits would not bring any new elements to the Court’s existing case-law (see Burov v. Moldova (dec.), no. 38875/03, § 33, 14 June 2011, and, by contrast, Mikhaylova v. Russia, no. 46998/08, § 49, 19 November 2015).
21. The Court therefore concludes that respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and its Protocols does not require an examination of the applications on the merits.
22. Lastly, as regards the third condition of this inadmissibility criterion, namely that the case must have been “duly considered” by a domestic tribunal, the Court notes that the applicant’s case was subject to several rounds of domestic proceedings. The applicant was able to submit her arguments in adversarial proceedings.
23. The three conditions of the inadmissibility criterion having therefore been satisfied, the Court finds that the applications must be declared inadmissible under Article 35 §§ 3 (b) and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 20 July 2017.
Fatoş AracıLuis López Guerra
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy