FIRST SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 30700/13
Pavel SKUPA
against the Czech Republic
The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting on 26 September 2017 as a Committee composed of:
Krzysztof Wojtyczek, President,
Armen Harutyunyan,
Jovan Ilievski, judges,
and Renata Degener, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 1 May 2013,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Pavel Skupa, is a Czech national who was born in 1958 and lives in Brno. He was represented before the Court by Mr T. Těmín, a lawyer practising in Prague.
2. The Czech Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Mr V.A. Schorm, from the Ministry of Justice.
3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
4. On 31 December 2002 the applicant brought proceedings for damages and unjust enrichment before the Brno Municipal Court (hereinafter “the main proceedings”).
5. In December 2007 he initiated proceedings for damages against the State under the State Liability Act (Act no. 82/1998) seeking to be compensated for the excessive length of the main proceedings.
6. On 30 November 2009 the Prague 2 District Court partly granted the applicant’s claim, awarding the applicant 9,000 Czech korunas (CZK – 350 euros (EUR)). On 4 May 2010 the Prague Municipal Court upheld this judgment. On 15 March 2012 the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal on points of law by the applicant. The applicant lodged a constitutional complaint in which he challenged the amount of compensation granted by the lower courts. On 6 November 2012 the Constitutional Court dismissed his complaint.
7. The Government referred to the further development of the main proceedings after the Prague Municipal Court’s judgment of 4 May 2010, noting in particular that the last decision in the matter had been adopted by the Supreme Court on 26 November 2014, a rejection of an appeal on points of law by the applicant.
8. In the meantime, on 22 July 2014, the applicant had lodged a claim under the State Liability Act with the Ministry of Justice for the amount of CZK 83,334 (EUR 3,032) in respect of non-pecuniary damage caused by the excessive length of the main proceedings in respect of the period after 1 December 2009. On 10 October 2014 the Ministry satisfied the applicant in full, taking into account the overall length of the main proceedings (since 2003). The sum was paid to the applicant on 13 October 2014.
COMPLAINT
9. The applicant complained under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention in respect of the proceedings for damages.
THE LAW
10. The applicant complained of a violation of his right to a hearing within a reasonable time, as provided for in Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, which reads as follows:
“In the determination of his civil rights and obligations ... everyone is entitled to a ... hearing within a reasonable time by [a] ... tribunal ...”
11. The Government submitted that the applicant had abused his right of individual application within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention. They pointed out that under Rule 47 § 7 of the Rules of Court, applicants must keep the Court informed of all circumstances relevant to the application. The present applicant had failed to do so as he had not informed the Court of developments in the compensation proceedings or the subsequent financial award he had received from the Ministry. Nor had he submitted to the Court any plausible explanation as to why he had failed to do so.
12. The Government further maintained that the applicant could not, or could no longer, claim to be a victim of a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. They invited the Court to declare the application inadmissible under Articles 34 and 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.
13. The applicant contested these arguments.
14. The Court has previously held that incomplete and therefore misleading information may amount to abuse of the right of individual application, especially if the information concerns the very core of the case and no sufficient explanation is given for the failure to disclose that information (see, among other authorities, Hadrabová v. the Czech Republic (dec.), nos. 42165/02 and 466/03, 25 September 2007). However, it also derives from the Court’s case-law that an application may only be rejected for abuse of the right of individual application if the Court has established with sufficient certainty that the applicant intended to mislead the Court (see Vasilevskiy v. Latvia (dec.), no. 73485/01, 10 January 2012, with further references).
15. The Court notes that the applicant made some effort to explain why he had not informed it of the relevant facts, stating that he had been later compensated by the Ministry only in respect of the main proceedings after 1 December 2009, while before the Court he sought compensation for excessive length prior to that date. However, the Court expresses some doubts about the plausibility of such an explanation (see, mutatis mutandis, Červeňáková v. the Czech Republic (dec.), no. 26852/09, § 27, 23 October 2012). In particular, the Court emphasises that in 2014 the Ministry of Justice awarded the applicant compensation explicitly with respect to the overall length of the main proceedings (see paragraph 8 above). The Court is thus of the view that the applicant concealed information intentionally in order to support his claims that firstly, in respect of the length of the main proceedings, he had not been awarded adequate pecuniary redress and, secondly, that he continued to be a victim of violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. With respect to the above, the Court concludes that the conduct of the applicant, who was legally represented, was contrary to the purpose of the right of individual petition, as provided for in Article 34 of the Convention.
16. Thus, it is appropriate to reject the application as a whole as an abuse of the right of application pursuant to Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.
17. Hence, the Court does not deem it necessary to consider under this head other objections and arguments of the parties.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 19 October 2017.
Renata DegenerKrzysztof Wojtyczek
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy