Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 135
November 2010
Ştefănică and Others v. Romania - 38155/02
Judgment 2.11.2010 [Section III]
Article 6
Civil proceedings
Article 6-1
Fair hearing
Lack of uniform interpretation of law by county courts sitting as courts of final instance in collective dismissal cases: violation
Facts – The applicants were part of a large group of employees who sought compensation following their collective dismissal as a result of the restructuring of their state-owned employer. Their claims were dismissed by a county court sitting as a court of final instance on the grounds that they did not meet the statutory conditions for an entitlement to compensation. They were refused leave to bring an extraordinary appeal before the Supreme Court of Justice. The claims of other employees in different county courts were, however, successful, although the reasoning varied. In their application to the European Court, the applicants complained that the domestic courts had adopted conflicting solutions in respect of similar legal issues.
Law – Article 6 § 1: Once a solution was adopted by a State to regulate the collective dismissal of hundreds of persons from state-owned companies, it had to be implemented with reasonable clarity and coherence in order to avoid, in so far as possible, uncertainty and ambiguity for those affected by the measures. Although the applicants’ claims for compensatory payments had been dismissed, awards had been made to persons in similar situations by other county courts in final decisions, so revealing an inconsistent approach by the domestic courts in the interpretation of the statutory conditions for making an award. The Court acknowledged that a lower court’s appreciation of the facts and assessment of the evidence could lead to different outcomes for parties with broadly similar grievances. That reality did not, per se, entail a violation of the principle of legal certainty. However, a problem did arise where, as in the applicants’ case, there were divergences in the application of substantively similar legal provisions to persons in near identical groups. There had been no remedy to resolve such divergences, as the county courts had sat as courts of final instance and the Supreme Court of Justice could not intervene in the ordinary proceedings. As to the possibility of an extraordinary appeal to that court, the applicants’ requests for leave had been refused and although other claimants had been successful in such an appeal, the Supreme Court’s decision had concerned only their individual case and was not meant to settle conflicting interpretations of national law. In any event, where the intervention of the Supreme Court was only possible by means of an extraordinary appeal, that in itself contradicted the principle of legal certainty. In sum, the inconsistent adjudication of claims brought by many persons in similar situations had led to a state of uncertainty that had deprived the applicants of a fair hearing.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 3,000 to each applicant in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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