Communicated on 20 April 2015
FIRST SECTION
Application no. 22899/12
Ante ŠARE
against Croatia
lodged on 30 March 2012
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Mr Ante Šare, is a Croatian national, who was born in 1938 and lives in Zagreb. He is represented before the Court by Mr Ž. Živković, a lawyer practising in Šibenik.
The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
On 22 November 2007 the applicant and five other plaintiffs lodged a civil action against Z.P. Joint Stock Company from Zagreb in the Šibenik Municipal Court (Općinski sud u Šibeniku). They sought recognition of their ownership of certain plots of land and their registration in the land register. The property at issue had been owned by their predecessors and confiscated in 1946. They indicated in their action a value of claim at 101,000 Croatian kunas (HRK).
On 10 September 2008 the Šibenik Municipal Court dismissed the plaintiffs’ action as unfounded.
The applicant and five other plaintiffs lodged an appeal and on 1 February 2010 the Šibenik County Court (Županijski sud u Šibeniku) dismissed it and upheld the first-instance judgment.
The plaintiffs than lodged an appeal on points of law (revizija) with the Supreme Court.
On 17 January 2011 the Supreme Court declared the appeal on points of law inadmissible ratione valoris. It held that the plaintiffs’ civil action had included two claims arising from the different legal basis and therefore it divided the value of dispute in two.
The plaintiffs then lodged a constitutional claim.
On 15 September 2011 the Constitutional Court dismissed their complaint as manifestly ill-founded.
COMPLAINT
The applicant complains under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention that he had no access to the Supreme Court because of the manner in which that court interpreted and applied relevant domestic law and calculated the value of dispute.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Did the manner in which the Supreme Court applied provisions of the Civil Procedure Act on the value of the claim deprive the applicant of access to the Supreme Court?
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