Communicated on 19 May 2015
FIRST SECTION
Application no. 24315/13
Ivan TABAK
against Croatia
lodged on 27 March 2013
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Mr Ivan Tabak, is a Croatian national, who was born in 1956 and lives in Ferdinandovac. He is represented before the Court by Mr Ž. Lacković, a lawyer practising in Đurđevac.
The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
On 20 May 1999 the applicant brought a civil action against the insurance company C.O. before the Đurđevac Municipal Court (Općinski sud u Đurđevcu), seeking pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage in relation to a road traffic accident.
On 2 March 2007 the first-instance court awarded the claim.
The defendant lodged an appeal and on 30 September 2008 the Koprivnica County Court (Županijski sud u Koprivnici) quashed the judgment in part and ordered the first-instance court to determine the amount of the applicant’s income lost as a result of injuries suffered in the road traffic accident.
On 27 October 2009 the first-instance court awarded the claim concerning the lost income in part.
The applicant lodged an appeal and on 23 February 2010 the Koprivnica County Court quashed the judgment of 27 October 2009 in part and remitted the case for a fresh examination.
In a new set of proceedings, on 5 March 2012, the first instance-court dismissed the claim for compensation of lost income as unfounded. It based its findings on an expert witness report in which the expert witness concluded that the applicant’s incapacity to work was not a result of the injuries suffered in the road traffic accident.
The applicant then appointed new lawyers to represent him in the appellate proceedings who noticed that the expert witness upon whose opinion the first-instance court based its judgment had been for a long period of time a director of the defendant’s Medical Service, while at the time of giving the expert witness testimony, she was the president of the management board of the defendant’s subsidiary company C.Z.O.
The applicant lodged an appeal in which he complained, inter alia, that he did not have fair proceedings because his case was decided upon the opinion of the biased expert witness because she worked for the defendant as a medical examiner and she was also the president of the defendant’s daughter company’s management board.
On 4 September 2012 the second-instance court dismissed the applicant’s appeal as unfounded. It held, inter alia, that the applicant should have raised the objection regarding the expert witness’s impartiality during the first-instance court proceedings.
The applicant then lodged a constitutional complaint.
On 19 December 2012 the Constitutional Court declared the applicant’s constitutional complaint inadmissible.
COMPLAINTS
The applicant complains under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention that he did not have a fair hearing before an impartial tribunal, and, in particular that the principle of equality of arms was breached because the national courts based their judgments on the opinion given by an expert who had worked for the defendant as a medical examiner and was also the president of the defendant’s daughter company’s management board.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Was the applicant afforded a fair hearing before an impartial tribunal in the proceedings before the domestic courts as required by Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?
2. In particular, was the principle of equality of arms breached when the first-instance court appointed a medical expert who was an employee of a party to a case and subsequently based its judgment on her opinion?
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