SECOND SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 24886/07
Abdurrahman YABAN
against Turkey
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 16 December 2014 as a Committee composed of:
Helen Keller, President,
Egidijus Kūris,
Jon Fridrik Kjølbro, judges,
and Abel Campos, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 9 June 2007,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Abdurrahman Yaban, is a Turkish national, who was born in 1968 and lives in Aydın. He was represented before the Court by Mr Ü. Karaca, a lawyer practising in Gaziantep.
A. The circumstances of the case
2. On 24 April 2000, when the applicant was a non-commissioned officer in the army, he was accidentally shot and seriously wounded. He was treated in a military hospital. Following his treatment, on 11 October 2002 the applicant applied to the Supreme Military Administrative Court and requested 10,000,000 Turkish liras (TRL) compensation (approximately 6,200 euros (EUR)) for his pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages, sustained during his treatment.
3. The applicant was not discharged and retired from the army on account of his disability at the time of applying for compensation. Thus, the applicant particularly requested the Supreme Military Administrative Court to reserve his right to initiate additional compensation proceedings.
4. During the proceedings, the Supreme Military Administrative Court requested an expert report to be issued concerning the applicant’s damages. According to the expert report dated 25 May 2004, his damages were calculated as TRL 77,640,490 (approximately EUR 42,000). However, during the proceedings, the Supreme Military Administrative Court was informed that the applicant was discharged from the army and granted a disability pension. On 29 September 2004 the Supreme Military Administrative Court decided to grant the applicant compensation.
5. The compensation amount granted by the Supreme Military Administrative Court corresponded to the amount that the applicant had claimed when he had initiated the proceedings namely, EUR 6,200. As this amount was lower than the amount indicated in the expert report and relying on the said report, on 9 June 2006 the applicant brought a second action for additional damages before the Supreme Military Administrative Court.
6. On 25 September 2006, the Supreme Military Administrative Court rejected the applicant’s additional compensation request according to Section 46 (4) of the Supreme Military Administrative Court Act, which stipulates that amendments concerning requested compensation amounts could only be done once and should be filed within 30 days following the submission of the case before the Supreme Military Administrative Court. In its reasoning the Supreme Military Administrative Court concluded that the applicant did not request an amendment of the amount requested during the first compensation action and his second attempt for additional compensation for the same damages did not comply with the statutory time‑limit stipulated under Section 43 of the Law no. 1602.
7. The Supreme Military Administrative Court calculated the time-limit as starting from 16 April 2003, the date of applicant’s discharge from the army.
B. Relevant domestic law
8. Section 43 of the Supreme Military Administrative Court Act (Law No. 1602 of 4 July 1972) reads as follows:
“Anyone who considers him or herself to have suffered damage on account of a wrongful act of the administration must lodge an application for compensation with the relevant authority within a year of notification of the impugned act or from the date on which he or she learnt of the impugned act and, in any event, within five years of the commission of that act. Should all or part of the claim be dismissed, or if no reply is received within sixty days, an application for judicial review may be lodged ....”
COMPLAINTS
9. The applicant complained under Article 6 of the Convention that the length of proceedings had been excessive and that his right to a fair trial had been breached.
THE LAW
A. As to the complaint about the length of proceedings
10. As for the complaint concerning the length of proceedings, the Court notes that there are two sets of proceedings. The first set of proceedings in question began on 11 October 2002 and ended on 29 September 2004 and, the second set of proceedings began on 9 June 2006 and ended on 25 September 2006, having thus lasted for one year and eleven months and three months respectively.
11. The Court examined the reasonableness of that period in light of the circumstances of the case and with reference to the criteria established by its case-law, particularly the complexity of the case, the conduct of the applicant and of the relevant authorities and what was at stake for the applicant in the dispute (see, among many others, Frydlender v. France [GC], no. 30979/96, § 43, ECHR 2000-VII). It observes that the length of the proceedings in the instant case does not raise an issue under the Convention.
12. In the light of the foregoing, the Court finds that the complaint should be rejected as being manifestly ill-founded, pursuant to Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.
B. Fairness of the proceedings
13. The applicant alleged that his right to a fair trial had been breached during the proceedings before the Supreme Administrative Court. In this connection, he complained that the domestic court had applied the statutory time-limit very strictly, thereby violating his right to access to court.
14. The Court recalls that it has already examined a similar complaint in the case of Eşim v. Turkey, (no. 59601/09, 17 September 2013) and found a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention on the ground, inter alia, that right to access to a court should not be disregarded by strict interpretation of the time-limit which precludes a full examination of the merits of the case and imposes a disproportionate burden on the applicant. The Court observes that in the Eşim case, cited above, the domestic court had dismissed the applicant’s compensation request for non-compliance with the statutory time-limits by starting the running of the five-year statutory time-limit from the date of incident which had caused the damage, instead of taking into account the fact that Mr. Eşim had learnt about the extension of the damage on a later date.
15. The Court observes that according to Section 43 of the Law no. 1602, anyone who considers him or herself to have suffered damage on account of a wrongful act of the administration must lodge an application for compensation with the relevant authority within a year of notification of the impugned act or from the date on which he or she learnt of the impugned act. The Court further notes that the applicant became aware of his right to additional damages during the first set of compensation proceedings with the submission of an expert report dated 25 May 2004 or on 29 September 2004 at the latest when the Supreme Military Administrative Court granted him only the compensation amount he had claimed. However, the applicant waited until 9 June 2006 (approximately two years after he became aware of his right to additional damages) to bring his additional compensation request before the Supreme Military Administrative Court.
16. It is true that the Supreme Military Administrative Court, while rejecting the applicant’s additional compensation request, disregarded the fact that the applicant had learnt the amount of his additional damages during the first set of proceedings and calculated the running of the time-limit from the discharge of the applicant from the army on 16 April 2003. Nevertheless, this reasoning of the Supreme Military Administrative Court does not change the fact that the applicant did only bring his claim before the domestic court two years after he became aware of the additional damage. The Court observes that contrary to the Eşim case, cited above, where Mr. Eşim applied to the domestic court within the one-year statutory time-limit after he had become aware of his additional damages, in the instant case, the applicant did not comply with such mandatory statutory time-limit after he became aware of his additional damages.
17. Furthermore, the applicant did not provide the Court with any explanation on the reasons for which he did not comply with the time-limit stipulated under domestic law. The Court concludes that the applicant would have had access to a court, as required by Article 6 of the Convention, had he complied with the applicable procedural rules.
18. In view of the foregoing, it follows that this part of the application must be rejected for being manifestly ill-founded under Article 35 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Abel CamposHelen Keller
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy