THIRD SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 7407/06
Natalija SPROĢE
against Latvia
The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting on 20 October 2015 as a Chamber composed of:
Luis López Guerra, President,
Johannes Silvis,
Valeriu Griţco,
Branko Lubarda,
Carlo Ranzoni,
Mārtiņš Mits,
Armen Harutyunyan, judges,
and Stephen Phillips, Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 6 February 2006,
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, Ms Natalija Sproģe, is a Latvian national, who was born in 1980 and lives in Riga. She is represented before the Court by Mr W. Bowring, a lawyer practising in London.
2. The Latvian Government (“the Government”) are represented by their Agent, Ms K. Līce.
A. The circumstances of the case
3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
4. In the 1940s, following a nationalisation process (for more detailed historical background see Liepājnieks v. Latvia (dec.), no. 37586/06, 2 October 2010) , the applicant’s predecessors settled in an apartment in Čaka street, Riga, which was later rented by the applicant’s father. The applicant and her family lived in the apartment until 2002.
5. In February 1992 the dwelling house was denationalised and taken over by a private person. The new owner requested the applicant’s family to leave the apartment, alleging that it was unfit for occupation and required urgent repair. The dispute over the right to rent the apartment resulted in several sets of court proceedings between the applicant’s family and the landlord.
1. Eviction proceedings
6. In 2000 the landlord brought a claim for eviction of the applicant’s family, without providing alternative accommodation.
7. On 29 January 2001 Judge T. of the Riga Centre District Court upheld the claim. On the basis of the parties’ statements and case materials, the court found that: (1) even in the absence of a written rental agreement between the parties, the applicant had been renting the contested apartment; (2) the apartment needed renovation and the plaintiff had proved his intention to carry out the necessary work, and therefore the condition for terminating the rental agreement had been met; (3) the plaintiff had warned the tenants about the termination of the rental agreement in accordance with a procedure provided by law.
8. On 14 March 2002 an appeal by the applicant was dismissed by the Riga Regional Court, which on 27 March 2002 issued an execution order.
9. The decision became final in August 2002 when the Senate of the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal on points of law by the applicant.
2. Civil proceedings concerning the landlord’s access to enter the apartment rented by the applicant and her family members
10. While the above proceedings were pending, in 2001 the landlord brought a claim against the applicant and her family asking the court to order the tenants to give him access to the apartment. He argued that certain parts of the apartment were in a critical condition and required urgent repair owing to the fact that the wooden construction between the floors was decayed and risked collapsing.
11. On 21 August 2001 Judge T. of the Riga Centre District Court, in the absence of the applicant and her family, upheld the claim. The applicant and her family were duly informed of the proceedings.
12. The judgment was subject to appeal. Owing to its urgent nature, the lower court ordered the immediate execution of the judgment.
13. The applicant and the other defendants appealed and refused to implement the judgment. Following the bailiff’s report that execution of the judgment was impossible, Judge T. on 10 September and 16 October 2001 imposed a fine of 50 lati (LVL) (70 euros (EUR)) and LVL 500 (EUR 700) on each of the three defendants, including the applicant. Upon appeal by the applicant, the Riga Regional Court quashed the decisions in a final ruling on 29 January 2002.
3. Administrative offence proceedings
14. Meanwhile, the Administrative Commission of the Riga Municipality Centre District had on various occasions imposed fines on the applicant and her family for failing to allow the landlord to enter the apartment, in breach of the Administrative Offences Code in force at the time. On at least one occasion in January 2002 Judge T. had made a decision relating to an administrative fine imposed on one of the applicant’s family members; in the decision she had identified shortcomings in the administrative offence proceedings and discontinued them. The decision was final.
4. Enforcement of the eviction order and the damages proceedings
15. It appears that on 16 October 2002 a bailiff attempted to carry out the eviction in accordance with the order issued on 27 March 2002. The applicant and her family allegedly refused to leave the apartment, arguing that the eviction was unlawful. The landlord therefore proceeded to have the doors of the apartment opened by force, but it was discovered that the entrance was blocked with furniture and it was impossible to enter. An incident arose between the workers assigned by the bailiff and the people who were at the apartment during the eviction.
16. On 27 January 2003 the landlord brought a civil claim for damages against the applicant and her family for the broken apartment door and for damage to belongings of other people involved in the incident.
17. On 30 June 2003 the lower court, in the absence of the defendants, upheld the claim and ordered the defendants to pay LVL 1,979 (around EUR 2,830) in damages.
18. The applicant appealed, arguing that opening the doors by force had not been necessary, and that the court had failed to establish a causal link between the actions of each of the defendants and the alleged damage.
19. On 25 April 2005 the Riga Regional Court, sitting as a panel of three judges, examined the applicant’s appeal, with Judge T. as one of the judges. At the beginning of the hearing the applicant challenged Judge T.’s impartiality, arguing that she had evicted her family from the apartment and that therefore she might have an interest in the case.
20. The court dismissed the objection and since there were no other requests received by the parties, continued to examine the appeal on the merits. In a judgment of 9 May 2005 the court partly upheld the claim. It observed that the applicant’s family had been evicted from the apartment in accordance with a valid court judgment and that witness statements had established that on 16 October 2002 the defendants had objected to the request by the court bailiff. In the court’s opinion there was no doubt that the plaintiff had sustained damage and that the lower court had correctly found that the damage had been caused by the applicant and her family because the eviction concerned all of them.
21. In an appeal on points of law the applicant noted that she had raised objections against Judge T., listing all the decisions the judge had previously made.
22. On 8 August 2005 a Senate preparatory meeting refused leave to appeal on points of law and the cassation proceedings were discontinued. The decision did not address the allegations of a lack of impartiality.
B. Relevant domestic law
23. Section 14 of the Law on Judicial Power provides that a judge does not have the right to participate in the adjudication of a case if he or she, personally, directly or indirectly, has an interest in the outcome of the case, or if there are other circumstances creating well-founded reasons to question the judge’s impartiality. In such cases a judge must withdraw from the case. If a judge or a lay judge has not withdrawn from the case, anyone participating in the proceedings may request such a withdrawal according to a procedure prescribed by law.
24. Sections 17 and 19 of the Civil Procedure Law contain similar provisions to those stated above. It also provides that any such requests must be accompanied by sufficient reasons.
COMPLAINT
25. The applicant complained under Article 6 of the Convention that her case had not been heard by an impartial tribunal.
THE LAW
A. Complaint under Article 6 of the Convention
26. The applicant complained that Judge T., before participating in the examination of the applicant’s appeal in the damages proceedings brought against her, had taken part in the adjudication of related civil proceedings between the same parties, thus undermining the impartiality of the court in question and violating Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. The relevant part of Article 6 § 1 reads as follows:
“In the determination of his civil rights and obligations ... everyone is entitled to a fair ... hearing ... by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law.”
1. Arguments of the parties
27. The Government contended that the tests of subjective and objective impartiality had been met in this case. They emphasised that there were no objectively justified reasons to fear that Judge T. lacked impartiality. The Government pointed to the fact that the domestic court had dismissed the applicant’s challenge against Judge T. on the grounds that she had carried out judicial functions in separate and unrelated civil proceedings. Moreover, the Government emphasised that the judge in dispute had been only one of three judges composing the appellate court in the proceedings at issue, and that the appellate court had ruled in favour of the applicant by decreasing the total amount of damages to be paid. Additionally, the judge in question had adopted a decision favourable to a member of the applicant’s family in the administrative offence proceedings.
28. The applicant contended that even though there were no signs of subjective bias on the part of the judge, there were objective grounds for the applicant to doubt her impartiality. In particular, according to the applicant, Judge T. had adopted an unfounded decision on her family’s eviction and had later confirmed that decision. There would likely be serious consequences for the judge where the evidential basis of the claim in the eviction case was doubted or rebutted in related proceedings. Furthermore, the applicant submitted that the award in the damages proceedings had been calculated on the basis of the same evidence, namely, the estimate of the renovation work, which had already been assessed by the same judge in the eviction proceedings. In response to the Government’s argument about the favourable decision adopted by Judge T. in the other set of proceedings, the applicant contended that it had only been adopted because of the presence of a prosecutor.
2. The Court’s assessment
29. The Court reiterates that impartiality, within the meaning of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, normally denotes the absence of prejudice or bias. There are two tests for assessing whether a tribunal is impartial: the first consists in seeking to determine a particular judge’s personal conviction or interest in a given case; and the second in ascertaining whether the judge offered guarantees sufficient to exclude any legitimate doubt in this respect. In the first test, the impartiality of a judge must be presumed until there is proof to the contrary. The second test determines whether there are ascertainable facts which may raise doubts as to the impartiality of a body sitting as a bench (see Lindon, Otchakovsky-Laurens and July v. France [GC], nos. 21279/02 and 36448/02, §§ 75-77, ECHR 2007‑IV; and, as a recent example, Morice v. France [GC], no. 29369/10, §§ 73-78, 23 April 2015).
30. The standpoint of those claiming that the body in question is not impartial is important but not decisive. What is decisive is whether the fear can be held to be objectively justified (see Kyprianou v. Cyprus [GC], no. 73797/01, § 118, ECHR 2005‑XIII). The answer to this question depends on the circumstances and the special features of each particular case and may include: the nature and extent of the judge’s functions during both sets of proceedings; whether in other sets of proceedings the judge has made statements which create an impression of a predetermined opinion in the proceedings; and whether the outcome of the proceeding was based on the evidence produced and arguments heard at the hearing (see Lindon, Otchakovsky-Laurens and July, cited above, §§ 78-80; Delage and Magistrello v. France (dec.), no. 40028/98, ECHR 2002-III; and, as a recent example, OOO ‘Vesti’ and Ukhov v. Russia, no. 21724/03, § 79, 30 May 2013).
31. Turning to the present case, the applicant has not alleged that Judge T. failed to meet the first test. In the light of all the circumstances of the case, the Court finds no indication that that judge acted with any personal bias against the applicant.
32. As to the second test, the Court has to examine whether, having regard to the nature and extent of Judge T.’s involvement in the proceedings for the applicant’s eviction, there were objectively justified fears of bias stemming from the same judge’s involvement in the damages proceedings. This could be the case if, for example, in both sets of proceedings the judge had to assess factual and legal questions which were similar, or at least if the difference between them was negligible (see, mutatis mutandis, Fazlı Aslaner v. Turkey, no. 36073/04, § 32, 4 March 2014), or if the judge in each set of proceedings had assessed the same evidentiary material (see Indra v. Slovakia, no. 46845/99, §§ 51-53, 1 February 2005).
33. The applicant’s fears as to T.’s lack of impartiality were based on the fact that the judge had from 2001 onwards taken at least five decisions in three separate proceedings involving the same parties and a related subject, namely, the applicant’s family’s eviction from the apartment. In particular, T., as a judge in a first-instance court, had upheld an eviction claim brought against the applicant and, while the proceedings were pending, the same judge had ordered the applicant to grant the landlord access to the apartment. Owing to the failure of the applicant and her family to comply with that order, the same judge had twice imposed a fine on them and had also sat in administrative offence proceedings against the applicant’s family concerning their failure to grant access to the apartment. As stated above, the Court has to look into all the circumstances of the various sets of proceedings.
34. It is not contested that the chain of proceedings derived from the initial judgment by which the domestic court, composed of T. and two other judges, had ordered the applicant’s eviction. Nevertheless, the evidence assessed by the court in reaching the outcome in the various sets of proceedings was not similar (see, in particular, paragraphs 7 and 20 above). Contrary to the applicant’s opinion, the evidence on which the rental agreement had been terminated and the applicant’s eviction ordered were not reassessed in the latter proceedings. In relation to the applicant’s argument that the domestic court had allegedly assessed the same estimate of the renovation work in both sets of proceedings, the Court observes that in none of the civil proceedings the domestic court had been called upon to determine whether the estimate had been correct. The parties had never contested the estimate which had merely an incidental evidential value in the above disputes.
35. Furthermore, in the damages proceedings the domestic court referred back to the judgment on the applicant’s eviction merely because it had become res judicata meaning that the court in question or any other court would be bound by it (see Lindon, Otchakovsky-Laurens and July v. France, cited above, § 79). Moreover, in establishing the applicant’s fault in the damages proceedings the court did not mention the applicant’s earlier failure to grant access to the apartment. The decision determining the applicant’s fault was reached after an open hearing of the parties’ arguments. There had additionally been no allegations that Judge T. had made any statements raising doubts as to whether she had been affected by her earlier findings of the applicant’s unlawful action. In the light of the above, the Court finds that the links between the various sets of proceedings were too remote to serve as reasonable grounds for fearing that Judge T. might have a preconceived attitude against the applicant.
36. It follows that this complaint is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.
B. Other complaints
37. The applicant alleged other violations of Article 3, Article 6, Article 8 and Article 13 of the Convention, and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention.
38. In the light of all the material in its possession, and in so far as the matters complained of are within its competence, the Court considers that the remainder of the application does not disclose any appearance of a violation of any of the above Articles of the Convention. It follows that these complaints are inadmissible and must be rejected pursuant to Article 35 §§ 1, 3 and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 12 November 2015.
Stephen PhillipsLuis López Guerra
RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy