THIRD SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 23929/04
Victor SINDREVICI
against the Republic of Moldova
The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting on 13 November 2012 as a Committee composed of:
Luis López Guerra, President,
Ján Šikuta,
Nona Tsotsoria, judges,
and Marialena Tsirli, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 20 May 2004,
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 Victor Sindrevici, is a Moldovan national, who was born in 1946 and lives in Chișinău.
2. The Moldovan Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent at the time, Mr V. Grosu.
The circumstances of the case
1. Background of the case
3. The applicant worked as the head of the scientific department of an experimental farm belonging to the Institute of Biological Defence (“the IBD”).
4. On 15 February 1992 the President of Moldova ordered the IBD to develop an integrated system for the biological protection of agricultural plants within five years.
5. During the subsequent few years, the IBD’s scientific council adopted a number of decisions, accusing the applicant of sabotage. Each time he found out about another such decision, he initiated proceedings against the authors, seeking a court finding that the statements about his role as a saboteur were groundless and claiming compensation for the damage caused to his honour and dignity.
6. The applicant obtained judgments in his favour on 23 April 1996, 20 August 1998 (upheld on 23 February 1999), 26 April 1999 (upheld on 27 February 2002 and on 17 October 2002), 3 February 2000 and 8 November 2000 (upheld on 17 October 2002). All these court proceedings were initiated by the applicant against the IBD, a subdivision of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, with the exception of one which was initiated against a newspaper that published an interview with the IBD’s director, I. P. Each such decision concerned a separate document issued by the IBD, such as the minutes of a session of the IBD’s scientific council dated 26 June 1995, a decision of 9 October 1997 taken by a special commission created by the IBD’s scientific council, a decision of IBD’s scientific council of 22 April 1998.
7. In 1998 the applicant was dismissed from his position because of the liquidation of the experimental farm.
2. Defamation proceedings in 2001 (“the 2001 proceedings”)
8. During one of the court proceedings, the director of the IBD, I.P., submitted to the court a copy of another decision adopted by the IBD’s scientific council on 19 February 1996 as evidence of the applicant’s role as a saboteur. The decision contained the following remarks:
“1. Because of the repeated sabotage of experiments and discrediting of [the IBD’s] scientific staff by [the applicant], the conducting of experiments on experimental lots in 1996 shall be considered impossible” and “4. [The applicant’s] sabotage of scientific research renders it impossible to comply with the Presidential decree regarding the creation of an integrated system for the protection of plants”
9. On 18 January 2001 the applicant initiated court proceedings, seeking a court finding that the statements were untrue and claiming compensation for the damage caused to him. He referred to the previously adopted final judgments in which it had been found that a number of similar statements made by the IBD had been untrue.
10. On 14 April 2003 the Botanica District Court rejected the applicant’s claims as unfounded. The court found that witnesses V.V., I.P., V.B and V.T. had confirmed before the court that the applicant had in fact disrupted a number of scientific experiments and had disregarded scientific technology, as confirmed by the decision adopted by the scientific council on 9 October 1997. The court found that the information contained in the decision of 19 February 1996 was not defamatory of the applicant, but simply criticised him for weaknesses in his work without aiming to discredit him. The court rejected the applicant’s claim that he lived in a constant state of fear of criminal prosecution, since “sabotage” was not a purely legal term and could be used in its lay meaning of disruption or delay in the development of a project or production process. Finally, the court found that the applicant had repeatedly disregarded technological processes and had caused material damage to the IBD.
11. In his appeal the applicant referred, inter alia, to the findings of previous court judgments. He noted that the judgment of 14 April 2003 contradicted the factual findings made in earlier judgments, notably that in all prior instances of his alleged sabotage the IBD could not prove in court his guilt and that he had won all those cases.
12. On 1 July 2003 the Chişinău Court of Appeal upheld the lower court’s judgment, finding that the scientific council’s decision of 19 February 1996 contained truthful information, as supported by a number of witnesses. The court found that “the fact that no sanctions were imposed on the applicant does not mean that he fulfilled his obligations in a proper manner”.
13. That judgment was upheld by the Supreme Court of Justice on 3 December 2003. The court found that the scientific council’s decision of 19 February 1996 did not contain defamatory remarks and was supported by witness statements.
3. Defamation proceedings in 2004
14. On an unknown date in 2004 the applicant initiated court proceedings, seeking a court finding that the statements noted in the minutes of the hearing of the IBD’s scientific council on 6 September 1995 were untrue and defamatory of him.
15. On 24 June 2004 the Botanica District Court found in his favour, declaring the statements about the applicant’s sabotage to be untrue.
16. On 24 November 2004 the Chişinău Court of Appeal quashed that judgment. It found that the information included in the minutes of 6 September 1995, which had been incorporated in the IBD’s scientific council’s decision taken on 9 October 1997, had already been the subject of previous court proceedings. Accordingly, the court discontinued the new court proceedings based on the principle of res judicata.
17. On 12 January 2005 the Supreme Court of Justice upheld the lower court’s judgment, also based on the principle of res judicata.
COMPLAINT
18. The applicant complained under Article 6 of the Convention that the courts had adopted incorrect judgments, in the absence of evidence of his role in any sabotage, and ignored the principle of res judicata by disregarding the factual findings in previous final judgments concerning the same type of statements about him as those under examination in the 2001 proceedings.
The relevant part of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention reads:
“In the determination of his civil rights and obligations ... everyone is entitled to a fair ... hearing ... by [a] ... tribunal ...”
THE LAW
19. The Court notes that the applicant’s main argument revolves around the allegation that the judgments adopted in the 2001 proceedings disregarded the findings made in all the previous proceedings, thus undermining the finality of those previous judgments. He therefore essentially raised a legal certainty issue.
20. It is to be noted that all the judgments adopted in favour of the applicant prior to the 2001 proceedings concerned similar matters, namely the applicant’s alleged sabotage of IBD’s research. However, each time when the applicant found out about a new document containing such statements he sought to obtain a new judgment in order to obtain a court finding of the untruthfulness of such statements, as well as additional compensation.
21. Moreover, the courts accepted this position and adopted each time a new decision, since each concerned a separate document containing new allegations. When they considered that the allegations were not new since they had already been incorporated in the analysis within previous proceedings, the courts refused to examine the applicant’s claims on the basis of the principle of res judicata (see paragraphs 14-17 above). The domestic courts never found unnecessary to examine a new complaint of the applicant which had not yet been previously examined, and to reject his compensation claims. At the same time, those courts found it necessary to examine each time the evidence submitted by the parties and never relied on the findings in the previous proceedings as a ground for finding a new violation of the applicant’s rights.
22. The Court concludes that, despite the similarity between all the applicant’s court actions against the IBD, the domestic courts consistently treated them as separate issues which required the parties to prove their position afresh.
23. In respect of the 2001 proceedings, the applicant essentially claims that in view of all the previous judgments in his favour finding the allegations about his sabotage as untrue, the courts should not have proceeded to an examination of the evidence submitted by the parties in the new proceedings. Instead, they should have relied on the findings in respect of previous similar statements about him and should not have departed from those findings in respect of his similar complaint made in 2001.
24. The Court cannot accept the applicant’s position. It reiterates that the effect of Article 6 § 1 is, inter alia, to place a “tribunal” under a duty to conduct a proper examination of the submissions, arguments and evidence, without prejudice to its assessment or to whether they are relevant for its decision, given that the Court is not called upon to examine whether arguments are adequately met (see Perez v. France [GC], no. 47287/99, § 80, ECHR 2004‑I, and Buzescu v. Romania, no. 61302/00, § 63, 24 May 2005).
25. In the present case, it was quite clear throughout the 2001 proceedings that the decision of 19 February 1996 had never been the subject of any prior examination. Therefore, it is natural that the domestic courts examined, as they had done in respect of all the previous court actions lodged by the applicant, all the evidence submitted by the parties. Unlike in those previous cases, they found that the evidence submitted by the IBD had been sufficient to prove the truthfulness of the statements made in the impugned decision. The Court does not find any sign of arbitrariness in the domestic court judgments or any other shortcoming raising an issue under Article 6 of the Convention.
26. It follows that the application is manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention and must be rejected pursuant to Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court unanimously
Declares the application inadmissible.
Marialena TsirliLuis López Guerra
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy