Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 83
February 2006
Rippe v. Germany (dec.) - 5398/03
Decision 2.2.2006 [Section III]
Article 6
Civil proceedings
Article 6-1
Access to court
Refusal to hold an oral hearing in appeal proceedings: inadmissible
The applicant was the managing partner of a company which rented commercial premises from another company (“the lessor”). In view of arrears of three months' rent, the lessor terminated the lease without notice. He subsequently lodged an action for eviction, alleging that he had sent the applicant two requests for payment. The Regional Court ordered the applicant's eviction from the premises, finding that the lessor had proved he had posted the letters to the applicant. The applicant appealed, claiming that the Regional Court's assessment of the evidence had been contrary to case-law because the fact that the letters had been posted to him did not suffice to prove that he had actually received them. He subsequently requested an oral hearing on his appeal. However, the Court of Appeal unanimously rejected the applicant's appeal without a hearing pursuant to new provisions in the Code of Civil Procedure (which had been introduced with a view to expediting civil proceedings). The court stated that the appeal had no prospect of success, that the matter at issue was not of fundamental importance and that it was not necessary to allow the appeal in order to safeguard a consistent application of the law. Moreover, the Court of Appeal confirmed that the Regional Court's assessment of evidence had not been contrary to the law, and that Article 6 of the Convention did not require a public hearing in every case in which an appeal was not ill-founded, but left sufficient room for the application of the new provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure.
Inadmissible under Article 6(1) (public hearing) – Article 6 does not always require a right to a public hearing. Whilst publicity is certainly one of the means whereby confidence in the courts is maintained, there are also other considerations, such as the need for an expeditious handling of a court's case-load, which must be taken into account in determining the necessity of public hearings in proceedings subsequent to trial at first-instance level. Moreover, the absence of a hearing before a second or third instance may be justified by the special features of the proceedings at issue. In the present case, had the Court of Appeal decided that the legal matter was of fundamental importance regarding facts or law, or that the first-instance court's reasoning could have led to inconsistent case-law, the new legislation expediting civil proceedings would not have applied and an oral hearing would have been required. The same situation would have arisen if only one of the three judges of the Court of Appeal had considered that the appeal had prospects of success. As regards the safeguarding of the applicant's procedural rights, a public hearing had been held at first instance. Moreover, the applicant had sufficient possibility of submitting arguments to the Court of Appeal before it took its final decision. As regards the main question raised by the applicant's appeal, that is, the assessment of evidence related to the eviction from his business premises, the Court did not find that the assessment of evidence by the first-instance court had been contrary to the law. Having regard to the entirety of the proceedings and the nature of the issues submitted to the Court of Appeal, the Court found there were special features to justify the decision not to hold a public hearing: manifestly ill-founded.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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