ŠRÁMKOVÁ v. SLOVAKIA

FIRST SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 7613/22
Barbora ŠRÁMKOVÁ
against Slovakia

(see appended table)

The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting on 14 December 2023 as a Committee composed of:

 Krzysztof Wojtyczek, President,
 Lətif Hüseynov,
 Ivana Jelić, judges,

and Viktoriya Maradudina, Acting Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to the above application lodged on 3 February 2022,

Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

FACTS AND PROCEDURE

The applicant’s details are set out in the appended table.

The applicant was represented by Mr O. Urban, then by Ms Lichnerová, lawyers practising in Bratislava.

The applicant’s complaints under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention concerning the excessive length of civil proceedings were communicated to the Slovak Government (“the Government”).

The impugned proceedings (no. 16 Cpr 17/2016) started on 7 November 2016 when the applicant lodged an action with the Bratislava III District Court seeking to declare the termination of her employment null and void and to be compensated for lost wages. On 6 December 2016 the District Court issued an interim measure, against which the applicant appealed. As a consequence, the file was transmitted to the appellate court on 17 January 2017, which returned it on 20 October 2017 after having issued a new decision on the applicant’s application for an interim measure.

Given that the District Court had held several hearings between November 2018 and March 2020 without having ruled on the case, the applicant lodged a constitutional complaint challenging the length of the proceedings before that court.

In its judgment of 25 August 2020 (no. IV. ÚS 204/2020) the Constitutional Court acknowledged that the District Court’s conduct had not been effective and had resulted in undue delays. It therefore ordered the latter to proceed without delay and awarded the applicant 1,000 euros (EUR) as just satisfaction for the breach of her right to have her case heard in a reasonable time.

Afterwards, a hearing scheduled for 26 November 2020 had to be re‑scheduled for 25 February 2021 due to post-operative treatment of the judge. The applicant’s representative then asked for that hearing to be adjourned because of his unavailability and, following the applicant’s objection to the hearing scheduled for 15 April 2021 being held in her absence (with regard to pandemic measures in place at the time), it was again re‑scheduled for 5 August 2021. At that hearing, held in the applicant’s absence (with her consent), the District Court delivered a judgment on the merits which was distributed to the parties on 10 November 2021. On 25 November 2021 the applicant filed an appeal which remained pending as of June 2022.

In the meantime, on 21 December 2021 the Constitutional Court (III. ÚS 429/2021) dismissed the applicant’s constitutional complaint lodged on 26 April 2021, ruling that her right to a trial within a reasonable time had not been breached. It considered that objective circumstances (the judge’s post-operative treatment, the Covid-19 pandemic) and also the applicant’s requests for adjournment of the hearings had contributed to the fact that the judgment on the merits had been delivered almost a year after its first ruling of 25 August 2020, and that the District Court could only be blamed for the time necessary for the written elaboration of its judgment.

THE LAW

Referring to the findings of the Constitutional Court, the Government considered that the applicant was no longer a “victim” of the alleged violation as regards the period until the Constitutional Court’s first judgment of 25 August 2020, which had had both preventive and compensatory effects. Concerning the subsequent period, the Government asserted that the District Court’s activity had been affected by the very complicated pandemic situation and that the applicant had contributed to the length of the proceedings. They noted, lastly, that the applicant could turn to the Constitutional Court again, should the appellate proceedings suffer from delays.

The Court notes that, calculated until the distribution on 10 November 2021 of the first-instance judgment, the impugned proceedings before the District Court lasted approximately four years and three months, deduction being made of the period between 17 January and 20 October 2017 when the case had been before the appellate court, which the applicant had not challenged before the Constitutional Court.

While such a length may, in principle, raise issues under the Convention, also in view of what was at stake for the applicant, the Court cannot ignore that there were no major periods of inactivity attributable to the District Court and that the Covid-19 restrictions could have had an adverse effect on the processing (see Q and R v. Slovenia, no. 19938/20, § 80, 8 February 2022). Moreover, the applicant contributed to that length when she first refused that the final hearing be held in her absence, but had ultimately not attended that hearing when re-scheduled. The Court must also take into account that the applicant was awarded compensation of EUR 1,000 at the domestic level.

In view of the above, the Court considers that the applicant’s complaints about the length of the proceedings are manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Declares the application inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 18 January 2024.

 Viktoriya Maradudina Krzysztof Wojtyczek
 Acting Deputy Registrar President

APPENDIX

Application raising complaints under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention

(excessive length of civil proceedings)