Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 114
December 2008
Schwarzkopf and Taussik v. the Czech Republic - 42162/02
Decision 2.12.2008 [Section V]
Article 6
Civil proceedings
Article 6-1
Fair hearing
Conflict in case-law arising out of decisions of Supreme Court: inadmissible
In 1995, under the 1991 Extra-Judicial Rehabilitations Act, the applicants brought an action for recovery of possession of property that had formerly belonged to their ancestors, who were victims of the persecution of Jews during the Second World War. In 1997 the District Court dismissed their claim, considering that they had not demonstrated that either they themselves or their ancestors had made their claim under a presidential decree of 1945 and a law of 1946 which annulled all transfers of ownership rights made under duress during the occupation for reasons of national, racial or political persecution, and gave the victims an opportunity to claim their rights and seek restitution of their property, provided that they did so by 17 June 1949. The court considered that this condition for restitution laid down in the 1991 Act had to be met in order for claimants to be able to seek restitution. In 1999 that judgment was upheld by the Regional Court, which referred, inter alia, to a decision of the Supreme Court. Relying, in their turn, on judgments of the Constitutional Court and on a judgment of the Supreme Court, the applicants appealed, arguing that the Regional Court’s judgment was of crucial legal importance. In 2000 the Supreme Court declared the applicants’ appeal inadmissible, finding that the Regional Court’s judgment was not of crucial legal importance. Pointing out that the relevant case-law was rapidly changing, it noted that one of its judgments of August 2000, concerning the interpretation of the 1991 Act, had established that the mere existence of a claim based on the decree of 1945 and the law of 1946 did not suffice and that it was necessary to show, with a minimum of proof, that the claim had been submitted to the authorities for a decision. In 2002 the Constitutional Court rejected as manifestly ill-founded two constitutional complaints lodged by the applicants challenging the decisions of the courts below on the one hand and that delivered by the Supreme Court in their case on the other, as well as the contradictions between that decision and the judgment delivered by the Supreme Court in April 2000.
Inadmissible: The Supreme Court had initially interpreted the 1991 Act restrictively. Then, following a certain relaxation of that approach in a judgment of 2000, it had wavered between two different positions. A more open interpretation had finally prevailed in the judgments delivered by the Supreme Court between 2001 and 2005. It being understood that the role of a Supreme Court was to resolve contradictions in case-law, it was noteworthy that in this case the Supreme Court had been at the origin of the impugned divergences. However, the Act of 1991 had introduced measures to guarantee coherency of practice both in the lower courts and in the Supreme Court. As the aim of those measures was to settle, not prevent, differences in judicial decisions, it was to be expected that harmonising the case-law would take some time. In the instant case the interpretation of the Act of 1991 had been settled in 2001, inter alia because the Supreme Court had qualified it as a matter of crucial legal importance. The fact, that the decision adopted by that court in the applicants’ case in 2000 had not yet reflected this new, more open approach, albeit regrettable, was not sufficient in itself to violate the principle of legal certainty: 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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