6.  In 1996 the applicant filed with the Warsaw District Court (sąd rejonowy) an action in which she requested the eviction of Ms J. from a flat she owned. She also claimed payment of overdue rent, in the amount of 4,371.17 Polish zlotys (PLN). She submitted that she had given notice of termination of the lease contract after J's recurrent failure to pay the rent on time. J. had been occupying the flat on the basis of an administrative decision, given under a so-called special lease scheme (see § 18 below). This administrative decision had created a protected tenancy contract between the parties, on the basis of which controlled rent was to be paid by the tenant and the tenancy could not be terminated by the owner. 7.  In January 1999 the applicant, having offered Ms J. an alternative flat, added a new eviction application, which was based on article 56 of the Law on the Lease of Dwellings and Housing Allowances (Ustawa o najmie lokali mieszkalnych i dodatkach mieszkaniowych). Subsequently, she withdrew the claim related to her tenant's failure to pay the rent. 8.  On 6 August 1999 the court gave judgment. It ordered Ms J. to pay overdue rent in the amount of PLN 459,15 and dismissed the eviction application. The court admitted that the applicant had offered J. an alternative flat before seeking her eviction. It pointed out, however, that Article 56 § 7 of the 1994 Law on the Lease of Dwellings provided that a flat offered to a tenant as alternative lodging had to be owned by the person seeking eviction (see § 20 below). However, the flat which the applicant had offered J. was owned by a housing co-operative and the applicant had only a limited right to it. The court considered that:
“The plaintiff has a co-operative quasi-proprietorial right to that flat, which, although relatively extensive, is yet limited by a number of provisions of the Co-operative Law and cannot be equated with ownership. This court is bound by laws, and the relevant provision of the Law on the Lease of Dwellings [concerning the requirements that an alternative dwelling had to meet] is unequivocal.” 9.  The court further considered that it was not empowered to assume that the legislature had made the reference to mandatory ownership of the alternative accommodation by mistake. Neither could it accept that this reference should be understood as covering also the quasi-proprietorial co‑operative right to an apartment. 10.  The court finally considered that, pursuant to the 1994 Law on the Lease of Dwellings, eviction of a tenant, if preceded by the offer of an alternative flat, was an exception to the general rule that an owner could not evict a tenant who complied with his or her statutory duties. Accordingly, the provisions covering such exceptions could not be given an extensive interpretation. 11.  In the same judgment the District Court discontinued the proceedings in so far as they related to the withdrawn application. 12.  The applicant appealed. She submitted that the Law on the Lease of Dwellings should not have been interpreted in her case in the literal manner proposed by the District Court. She argued that the main objective of the provisions concerning eviction of tenants was to protect the property rights of owners. On the other hand, those provisions were also aimed at guaranteeing tenants an effective right to continued and peaceful enjoyment of accommodation and thus required the owners to secure alternative flats for them. In the light of that aim of the Law, the interpretation made by the court had been too restrictive. As a result, only the rights of the tenant were protected by the judgment under appeal, to the detriment of the owner's rights. The applicant pointed out that the alternative lodging which she had offered J. made it possible for her to enjoy peaceful accommodation. The purpose of the provision applied in the case was essentially to secure the position of tenant in an alternative dwelling and to prevent him or her being evicted from it. The apartment offered by the applicant guaranteed such certainty, notwithstanding the fact that she did not own that apartment, but had another right in rem to it, close in its nature to ownership. For those reasons the applicant considered that the dismissal of her eviction application, which made it impossible for her to live in her own apartment, amounted to an infringement of her property rights. 13.   The applicant also resubmitted a declaration of the housing co-operative by which it had agreed that the applicant's apartment be let to Ms J. until the end of 2004, i.e. until the time-limit set by the 1994 Law on Lease of Dwellings for the prolongation of the system of protected tenancies. 14.  On 20 December 1999 the Warsaw Regional Court (sąd okręgowy) dismissed the applicant's appeal. It pointed out that the underlying purpose of a law could be examined as an aid to its interpretation only if an analysis of a literal meaning of its text proved ineffective. Having regard to the clear wording of the provision at issue and to an unequivocal reference to 'ownership' of the alternative accommodation, the court found that this was not the case. The provision on which the District Court had relied conferred special rights on the owner, in that she was entitled to offer alternative accommodation to the tenant who had been fully complying with the conditions of the tenancy contract. These special rights could not be interpreted in an open-ended manner to the detriment of the tenant. 15.  On 14 March 2000 the Warsaw Regional Court rejected the applicant's appeal against the judgment of 20 December 1999, as it was not provided for by law in that case. 16.  On 28 February 2001 the Supreme Court dismissed her appeal against the Regional Court's decision of 14 March 2000.