Communicated on 8 December 2015
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 49426/09
Jurgis MISIUKONIS and others
against Lithuania
lodged on 11 August 2009
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicants, Mr Jurgis Misiukonis (hereafter “the first applicant”), Ms Birutė Misiukonienė (hereafter “the second applicant”) and Ms Jurgita Visockienė (hereafter “the third applicant”), are Lithuanian nationals, who were born in 1940, 1942 and 1977 respectively and live in Kaunas. The first and the second applicants are husband and wife, and the third applicant is their daughter.
A. The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows.
1. Restoration of property rights
On 25 January 2001 the Vilnius County Administration (hereafter “the VCA”) acknowledged G.O. and V.P.O.’s restoration rights to a plot of land in the Antaviliai estate in the Vilnius region, which had belonged to their father and had been nationalised by the Soviet regime.
The following day G.O. and V.P.O. sold their restoration rights to other persons. G.O. sold the right to the restoration of his part of the land (0.728 hectares) in equal parts to four purchasers: the three applicants and V.M. (the first and the second applicants’ son). Each of them paid 15,000 Lithuanian litai (LTL; approximately 4,344 euro (EUR)) to G.O.
On 13 June 2001 the VCA issued documents confirming the applicants’ restoration rights to 0.182 hectares of land each. Later that month the applicants were provided with plots of land in the city of Vilnius.
In August 2001 the applicants sold their plots to third parties for the price of LTL 25,000 (EUR 7,240) for each plot.
2. Annulment of the restoration
In January 2002 the prosecutor of the Vilnius Region lodged a claim before the Vilnius City First District Court, asking to annul the administrative decisions which had acknowledged G.O.’s right to restoration, the sale of G.O.’s restoration rights to the applicants, and all the administrative decisions which had allocated land to the applicants. The prosecutor submitted an amended claim in June 2005.
The prosecutor indicated that the VCA had restored the applicants’ rights to property in the order of priority because the second applicant had been a deportee of the Soviet regime, and thus, in line with the domestic law, she and her family had priority rights to have their property rights restored. However, the prosecutor contended that G.O. and V.P.O. had not had such priority rights, so the applicants’ rights to G.O.’s property could not have been restored in the order of priority.
On 20 February 2006 the Vilnius City First District Court partly allowed the prosecutor’s claim. The court found that the authorities had lawfully decided to restore property rights to G.O. and V.P.O. The court also held the legal acts in force at the material time had allowed G.O. and V.P.O. to sell their restoration rights to other persons, so those rights had been sold to the applicants lawfully.
However, the court stated that G.O. could not have transferred more rights to the applicants than he had had himself; therefore, the applicants’ property rights could have only been restored under the same conditions as they would have been restored to G.O. Accordingly, the court held that the allocation of land to the applicants in the order of priority had been unlawful, and annulled the administrative decisions which had allocated the land to them.
As a result, the Vilnius City First District Court ordered the applicants to return to the State what they had received from the unlawful transaction. Since they had sold the land to third parties, the court decided that they had to pay to the State the market value of that land. The court considered that the applicants had acquired the land in good faith, thus, in line with Article 6.147 § 2 of the Civil Code, they had to return its lowest market value, as estimated by the State Enterprise Centre of Registers. Following that estimate, the court ordered each applicant to pay LTL 216,000 (EUR 62,560).
On 6 June 2006 the Vilnius Regional Court dismissed the applicants’ appeal and upheld the reasoning of the lower court. On 5 June 2007 the Supreme Court dismissed the applicants’ cassation appeal.
3. Proceedings for damages
The applicants subsequently submitted a claim for damages against the State. They contended that each of them had received LTL 25,000 for selling the land but had been ordered to pay LTL 216,000 to the State, and thus suffered pecuniary damage of LTL 191,000. They also asked for pecuniary damage of LTL 5,230 (EUR 1,514) for the court fees which each of them had had to pay in the previous proceedings.
On 13 March 2008 the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court dismissed the applicants’ claim. The court acknowledged that the VCA had acted unlawfully when allocating land to the applicants; however, it considered that the applicants had not proven that they had suffered any pecuniary damage. The court noted that the applicants still had the right to restoration of G.O.’s land because their agreement had been lawful, and that they were on the list of candidates to be given new plots of land. Accordingly, until such plots had been given to them, it was not possible to assess whether the applicants had suffered pecuniary damage or not.
The Vilnius Regional Administrative Court also noted that there had been a criminal investigation concerning unlawful distribution of restoration rights in the Vilnius City Land Department of the VCA. Although the investigation was eventually discontinued, it nonetheless detected that certain employees of the VCA had unlawfully issued documents proving restoration rights. The court noted that one of those employees was the applicants’ relative and that they had consulted him on the question of land restoration. Accordingly, the court held that the applicants should have known that they had received the land unlawfully, and thus they had themselves contributed to the pecuniary damages.
On 2 March 2009 the Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the applicants’ appeal and upheld the judgment of the lower court. It reiterated that the applicants could not be considered as having suffered pecuniary damage because they still had the right to receive new plots of land from the State. The court further noted that even if such damage had been proven, the applicants had contributed to it because they had acquired land in breach of legal norms, and the fact that they had received that land from the authorities did not absolve them of the responsibility.
B. Relevant domestic law
Article 1.80 § 1 of the Civil Code, in force since 1 July 2001, provides that any transaction which fails to comply with the mandatory statutory provisions shall be null and void, and each party to such a transaction shall be bound to return to the other party everything they have received from the transaction.
Article 4.96 § 2 of the Civil Code provides that the State may confiscate immovable property from a person who acquired such property in good faith only if the rightful owner lost such property as a result of a crime. Article 4.96 § 3 provides that where the ownership of property has been acquired for free from a person who had no right to transfer the ownership of that property, such property can be confiscated from the person who acquired it, irrespective of whether he or she acquired it in good faith.
Article 6.146 of the Civil Code provides that restitution shall be made in kind, except in cases where this is impossible or would cause serious inconvenience to the parties. In these cases, restitution shall be effectuated by means of a monetary equivalent payment.
Article 6.147 § 1 of the Civil Code provides that the monetary equivalent shall be estimated based on prices valid at the time the debtor received what he or she is required to restore. Article 6.147 § 2 provides that in the event of destruction or transfer of property subject to restitution, the person shall be bound to compensate for the value of the property as it was at the time the property was received, destroyed or transferred, or at the time of its restitution, whichever value is the lowest. In the event of the person liable to make restitution being in bad faith, or where the restitution is due to his or her fault, he or she shall be bound to return the highest value of the property.
COMPLAINT
The applicants complain under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention that they had to bear an individual and excessive burden because the amount of money which they had to return to the State (LTL 216,000 each) was significantly higher than what they had received from selling the land (LTL 25,000 each). They submit that the unlawful allocation of land resulted from the errors of the State authorities, and thus the applicants should not have to bear the burden of those errors. They also contend that the domestic courts did not have any grounds to find that the applicants had contributed to the pecuniary damage because the criminal investigation had not made any findings as to the applicants’ unlawful actions.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Has there been an interference with the applicants’ peaceful enjoyment of possessions, within the meaning of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1?
2. If so, was that interference justified under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1? In particular, did it impose an excessive individual burden on the applicants, in view of the fact that they had to pay to the State more money than they had received from selling the land?
The parties are requested to inform the Court about any further developments regarding the applicants’ situation.
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