4.  The applicant was born in 1943 and lives in the Kaunas region. 5.  On an unspecified date in 1991 the former owners of the land belonging to the Noreikiškės settlement, situated on the territory of the Lithuanian Academy of Agriculture (“the LAA”), filed claims for restitution of their ownership rights. 6.  On 13 March 1992 the Noreikiškės settlement local council assigned a plot of land for the applicant’s use and for construction of a private house. On 20 July 1992 the applicant paid 2,970 Russian roubles (RUR) for the use of that plot. 7.  On 13 October 1992 a meeting of the Kaunas Regional Board took place attended by the applicant, acting on behalf of the LAA, a representative of the pre-nationalisation owners who sought to restore their property rights to the land assigned to the territory of the new LAA settlement, and representatives of various municipal and State institutions. It was decided to organise another meeting to discuss the possibility of restoring property rights to the land in Noreikiškės settlement in kind and to propose to the Government that plots of 0.3 hectares be allocated to the former owners for the construction of private houses. 8.  Between 1992 and 1995 the Government enacted several decrees allowing persons in the applicant’s position to acquire ownership of the land they had been using. 9.  On 11 April 1995 the applicant and the Kaunas municipality signed a land-purchase agreement which specified that on 20 July 1992 the applicant had paid 29.70 Lithuanian litas (LTL) for the plot of land. On 14 April 1995 the plot of land was registered in the State Land Registry in the applicant’s name and, in accordance with Lithuanian law, the applicant became its owner. 10.  On 5 June 1995, civil proceedings were brought by a group of eight private individuals for annulment of the land-purchase agreements, including that of the applicant. The plaintiffs claimed restitution of their property rights to the land in question, which the LAA had allocated for the building of private houses and which had been nationalised by the Soviet occupying power in the 1940s. The dispute involved a total of 129 co-defendants, including the applicant. 11.  On 27 June 1995 the Kaunas District Court ordered the seizure of the applicant’s land. The order was later upheld by the Kaunas Regional Court and the Supreme Court, and specified that the applicant could grow only plants with a one-year lifespan on the land at issue. Moreover, the applicant was forbidden from carrying out any construction activities on the land pending the court proceedings. 12.  On 28 October 1996 the Kaunas District Court dismissed the action as unsubstantiated. 13.  On 5 February 1998 the Kaunas Regional Court quashed the decision, noting that the lower court had failed to properly inform 38 defendants in the case about the forthcoming hearing. The case was returned for fresh examination at first instance. 14.  On 26 February 1999 the Kaunas District Court again dismissed the action. 15.  On an unspecified date the case was transferred to the Panevėžys Regional Court, which examined it on appeal. 16.  On 14 March 2000 the Panevėžys Regional Court stayed the proceedings, deciding to submit a question as to the constitutionality of the Government decrees on the basis of which the land had been sold to the applicant. 17.  On 6 March 2002 the Kaunas County Governor’s Office informed the applicant that despite the courts’ ban on pursuing any activities on the plot of land, “at present there are perennial plants and there is also a pond”. The applicant was requested to “bring the illegal actions to an end”. On 12 April 2002 the applicant informed the local authorities that “it was only from your letter that I learned about the seizure of my plot of land. The pond was dug, the plants were planted and other works were done in 1993, 1994 and the first half of 1995”. 18.  On 10 May 2002 the Constitutional Court adopted a ruling, finding that the Government decrees in question violated the rights of the former owners of the land, who had the right to restitution of their property. The decrees were declared unconstitutional as contradicting Article 23 of the Constitution and, inter alia, Article 12 § 1 (15) of the Law on the procedure and conditions governing the restoration of rights of ownership to existing real property (Įstatymas dėl piliečių nuosavybės teisių į išlikusį nekilnojamąjį turtą atstatymo tvarkos ir sąlygų) (“the Restitution Law”). The ruling read in part as follows:
 “... although the legislature enjoys a certain discretion in establishing the conditions and procedure for the restoration of rights of ownership, in doing so it must take account of the constitutional principle of protection of the right of ownership. This principle also presupposes that, unless it is necessary for the needs of society, land unlawfully nationalised by the occupying government must be returned to its owners in kind under the procedure and conditions established by law...
... given that Government Decree no. 649 of 25 August 1993 and Government Decree no. 294 of 19 April 1994 established that the land allocated to the LAA also included an area designated for building private dwelling houses, and that it was established that the status of the land, subject to being bought out by the State, was granted because that land was on territory allocated to the scientific and educational establishment, and given also that Government Decree no. 350 of 9 March 1995 permitted natural persons to acquire private ownership of the plots of land on the territory attributed to the educational-production base of the LAA, the right of the owners to restore their ownership rights over the said land has been denied”. 19.  As a result, on 28 June 2002 the Panevėžys Regional Court reversed the decision of the Kaunas District Court of 26 February 1999. It was noted that the Government decrees on the basis of which the applicant had signed the land-purchase agreement had been declared unconstitutional. Consequently, the administrative acts whereby the land had been sold to the applicant were declared null and void. The court also observed that “the defendants [one of them being the applicant] have for the most part not started the construction works. Not all the defendants have bought out the plots of land which were assigned to them for construction of private houses and not all the [defendants] who signed land-purchase agreements have had them registered”. The court applied Article 1.80 of the Civil Code and ordered restitution, obliging the local authorities to return to the applicant the sum of LTL 29.70 which he had previously paid for the plot of land at issue. As some of the defendants had paid for their plots of land in 1992 with “single-use investment vouchers” (vienkartinėmis išmokomis), the court ordered that those sums be repaid to them. 20.  The defendants, including the applicant, lodged an appeal on points of law. They alleged, inter alia, that the Panevėžys Regional Court had examined the case in the absence of their lawyer. The defendants further argued that it would be impossible to execute the appellate court’s decision since it ordered restitution in “single-use investment vouchers”, which no longer had any pecuniary value in Lithuania. Lastly, they contended that the annulment of the land-purchase contracts was contrary to the right to protection of private property and would amount to re-privatisation. 21.  On 31 January 2003 the Supreme Court upheld the decision. It stated that the annulment of the impugned acts was necessary to protect the legitimate interests of the pre-nationalisation owners. The court acknowledged that the “single-use investment vouchers” had in the meantime ceased to exist as a means of payment. The Supreme Court noted, however, that the subject matter of the proceedings was the annulment of the land-purchase contracts and that the assessment of possible compensation for the investment vouchers had not been its subject matter. Finally, the court found that on 19 June 2002 the applicant’s lawyer had been duly notified of the appellate court hearing which was to take place on 27 June 2002, and that she had requested that the hearing be postponed, given that she had to attend another court hearing at the same time. The Supreme Court, however, noted that the applicant’s lawyer had failed to provide any proof of that hearing. The court ruled that, taking into account the need to ensure the speediness of the proceedings and the high number of participants in the case, the appellate court had taken a reasonable decision to hear the case in the lawyer’s absence. 22.  By a decision of 14 March 2005 the Deputy Governor of Kaunas County restored the former owners’ title to the plot of land on the LAA settlement of which the applicant had acquired ownership under the annulled land-purchase agreement of 11 April 1995.