Trapeznikov and Others v. Russia

Information Note on the Court’s case-law 195

April 2016

Trapeznikov and Others v. Russia - 5623/09, 12460/09, 33656/09 et al.

Judgment 5.4.2016 [Section III]

Article 6

Civil proceedings

Article 6-1

Fair hearing

Application of supervisory review procedure in applicants’ civil cases following 2008 reform in conformity with legal certainty requirement: no violation

Facts – Since 2003 the supervisory review procedure in Russian civil cases has been subject to continuous reforms. In 2003 the new Code of Civil Procedure limited the possibility of initiating supervisory review solely to the parties in the case and introduced a one-year time-limit for lodging the application.* In 2008 new amendments to the procedure** reduced the time-limit for lodging a supervisory review application from one year to six months, abolished the discretionary power of the regional court presidents to overrule decisions taken by regional court judges dismissing such applications, and made it obligatory to exhaust the available avenues of appeal before applying for supervisory review. The most recent reform, in 2012,*** converted the first two levels of supervisory review (the presidia of the regional courts and the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court) into courts of cassation while limiting the supervisory review procedure to the Presidium of the Supreme Court.

In the instant case, final and enforceable judgments in the applicants’ favour were quashed by way of supervisory review at the defendants’ requests under the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure as in force between 7 January 2008 and 1 January 2012, that is after the 2008 reform.

Law – Article 6 § 1: In accordance with the 2008 legislative amendments, a supervisory review application had to be lodged (a) by a party to the proceedings and (b) within six months of the appeal judgment. While the appeal judgment was deemed to be binding and enforceable under domestic law, in numerous Contracting States, supreme judicial instances examined appeals on points of law after the judgments of the lower courts had become binding and enforceable. This did not, ipso facto, raise an issue under the principle of legal certainty, provided a number of criteria were met. These criteria included the existence of a relatively short time-limit and the Court had previously accepted that a six-month time-limit for lodging such appeals did not appear unreasonable.

In a supervisory review application, the party making the application could allege substantial violations of substantive or procedural law which had an impact on the determination of the case. The supervisory review court had the power to quash the judgment and remit the case to the lower courts for fresh examination, or it could modify the judgment and terminate the proceedings. If no supervisory review application was lodged within six months of the delivery of the appeal judgment, that judgment became irrevocable and could no longer be called into question for misapplication of the domestic substantive or procedural law.

The Court was not convinced that in the system so construed the judgments at the appeal level acquired such stability that the successful party could not expect the other party not to have recourse to the supervisory review remedy after losing the case at second instance. Although the Court had already decided not to take that remedy into account for the purposes of the six-month rule, it could not thus exclude that its operation in practice could, under certain circumstances, be consonant with the requirements of Article 6. The issue to be addressed in the present case was not whether the amended 2008 supervisory review procedure was compatible as such with the Convention but whether the procedure, as applied in the circumstances of the applicants’ cases, had resulted in a violation of the legal-certainty requirement.

In the instant case, the supervisory review applications had been lodged by parties to the proceedings, not a third party State official, and after they had availed themselves of an appeal before a second-instance court. The domestic judgments delivered in the applicants’ favour had been quashed by higher courts following requests for supervisory review lodged by the defendant parties within the relatively short time-limits laid down by the Code of Civil Procedure, on the grounds that they were contrary to the law or ill-founded. The supervisory review proceedings had not lasted indefinitely and were not tarnished by any deficiency identified by the Court in its previous case-law. As a result, the supervisory review as applied in the particular circumstances of the applicants’ cases constituted the next logical element available to the parties in the chain of domestic remedies, rather than an extraordinary means of reopening proceedings. Furthermore, the relevant domestic decisions did not disclose any manifestly arbitrary reasoning.

Thus, there had been no breach of the principle of legal certainty on account of the supervisory review procedure as applied in the applicants’ cases.****

Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).

* The Court found this procedure to be in breach of the legal certainty requirement (see, among many other authorities, Prisyazhnikova and Dolgopolov v. Russia, 24247/04, 28 September 2006; Sobelin and Others v. Russia, 30672/03 et al., 3 May 2007; and Kulkov and Others v. Russia, 25114/03 et al., 8 January 2009).

** The Court had assessed the 2008 reform only under Article 35 and found that the amended supervisory review procedure was not subject to exhaustion for the purposes of that Article (Martynets v. Russia (dec.), 29612/09, 5 November 2009, Information Note 124).

*** The 2012 reform had been assessed by the Court only under Article 35. The Court had considered that the new cassation procedure available before two former supervisory review courts after the 2012 reform was to be exhausted for the purposes of that Article  (see Abramyan and Others v. Russia (dec.), 38951/13 and 59611/13, 12 May 2015, Information Note 186).

**** See also Svetlana Vasilyeva v. Russia, 10775/09, 5 April 2016, where the Court found a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 on the ground that the supervisory review procedure, as applied in that case, constituted unlawful interference with the applicant’s right to the peaceful enjoyment of her possessions.

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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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