Communicated on 16 February 2018
FIRST SECTION
Application no. 34872/16
Piotr WIERZBICKI and Bożena WIERZBICKA
against Poland
lodged on 9 June 2016
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicants, Mr Piotr Wierzbicki and Ms Bożena Wierzbicka, are Polish nationals, who were born in 1960 and 1965, respectively and who live in Kobyłka.
The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows.
1. Background
On 2 June 2009 the State-owned Polish Television (TVP) broadcast a programme which criticised the applicants in the context of the sale of real estate which ultimately was not concluded between the applicants and a third party. The applicants were called “cheaters” (oszuści). The person who was the party to the applicants’ pre-sale contract, stated in the programme, that the first applicant had committed criminal offences, such as that his developer’s company had been unregistered and that he had committed fraud in respect of his other contrahents. Information that each applicant suffered from psychiatric ailments was also made public in the programme. The programme revealed the first names and the first letter of the surname of the applicants, showed copies of their sale advertisements, and it featured their house and their neighbourhood.
The applicants submitted that they were easily recognised by their family members and neighbours.
2. Proceedings for defamation
On 29 September 2009 the applicants brought a civil action against the TVP for defamation, seeking 200,000 Polish zlotys (PLN) (approximately 50,000 euros, EUR) of just satisfaction, apologies and withdrawal of a programme from the TV’s internet site.
On 10 July 2013 the Warsaw Regional Court (Sąd Okręgowy) partly allowed the action. It ordered TVP to publicly apologise to the applicants, to pay them PLN 50,000 (approximately EUR 12,500) and to remove the programme from the internet site. The court established that TV had broadcast the program. The would-be contrahent’s claim that the applicants had been bound by the sale contract was dismissed by the court on the grounds that the applicants had suffered from mental disorder while he had signed the pre-sale agreement. The court considered that the plaintiffs had been easily identified by their neighbours and other residents of their village who had showed them disrespect.
On 29 July 2014 the Warsaw Court of Appeal (Sąd Apelacyjny) quashed the first-instance judgment after the TVP’s appeal and dismissed the applicants’ action altogether and charged them with PLN 1,980 (approximately EUR 500) of court fees.
The appellate court disagreed with the lower court’s conclusion in respect of infringement of the applicants’ personal rights. It held that the programme had not shown the applicants’ faces and had not indicated their surname. It followed that they could not publicly be identified.
On 10 December 2015 the Supreme Court dismissed the applicants’ cassation appeal.
COMPLAINT
The applicants complain, invoking Articles 8 and 13 of the Convention, that the State failed in its positive obligation to ensure the protection of their right to respect for their private life and reputation. In particular, they challenge the judgment of the domestic court in their defamation case and complain that the civil action for compensation is ineffective because, under the applicable law as interpreted by the appellate court, a personal rights’ infringement cannot be committed unless the full identity and the image of the alleged victim had been disclosed, even if other elements of the publication had allowed, as in the applicants’ case, to identify the person concerned.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Has there been a violation of the applicants’ right to respect for their private life, contrary to Article 8 of the Convention?
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