Published on 29 January 2024
FIRST SECTION
Application no. 9533/23
Jože VINCETIČ
against Slovenia
lodged on 21 February 2023
communicated on 11 January 2024
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns a search of the applicant’s home carried out by the police on 16 December 2009 in the context of the criminal proceedings against him. On 9 June 2016 the Constitutional Court found that the search had been unlawful as it had not been properly justified. Subsequently, the applicant sued the State for compensation for non-pecuniary damage sustained due to the unlawful search. His claim was rejected on the grounds that for the court’s act to be considered in breach of duty (an element of tort) it had to be shown that the court grossly disregarded such duty, that is that its act amounted to “the most severe forms of unlawfulness”. The domestic courts considered that this threshold of unlawfulness had not been attained in the applicant’s case. The applicant received the Constitutional Court’s decision dismissing his constitutional compliant on 21 October 2022.
The applicant complains that the unlawful search of his home amounted to a breach of Article 8 of the Convention and that he had not been granted appropriate relief for that breach.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Has there been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention because of the domestic courts’ refusal to grant the applicant compensation for non‑pecuniary damage relating to the unlawful search of his home (compare, Gutsanovi v. Bulgaria, no. 34529/10, § 223, ECHR 2013 (extracts), and, mutatis mutandis, Dragojević v. Croatia, no. 68955/11, §§ 88-101, 15 January 2015, and Svetina v. Slovenia, no. 38059/13, § 60, 22 May 2018)?