5.  The applicant, Mr Miloš Ťupa, is a Czech national who was born in 1970 and lives in Bystřice nad Pernštejnem. 6.  He lives in a house with his mother, brothers and sisters. On 4 January 2007 the police came to their house with a doctor and took the applicant against his will to Jihlava Psychiatric Hospital. 7.  On the morning of 8 January 2007 the hospital informed Jihlava District Court (okresní soud) of the applicant’s involuntary detention pursuant to Article 191a § 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure. 8.  On the afternoon of the same day a senior clerk at the District Court went to the hospital and interviewed the applicant and his treating doctor. A one-paragraph record of the interview with the doctor shows that the latter stated that the applicant had been hospitalised at the recommendation of his general practitioner who had asserted that the applicant had suffered from auditory hallucinations for about a year, thought that his food was being poisoned, slept in a gas mask because he thought somebody had tried to poison him with gas and threatened to kill his brother. It seems that the hospital called the applicant’s family to confirm this last event. The doctor further said that the applicant had disputed the information given by the general practitioner, that he had been cooperating only formally and that there was considerable paranoia and lack of logic in his thinking. According to the doctor, because the applicant had not given his consent, it had been decided to admit him involuntarily. 9.  The applicant, in his statement to the clerk, disputed these allegations maintaining that he had not seen his general practitioner for several months and that he had had disputes with his mother and brothers who had orchestrated his detention. He further claimed that he had never been treated by a psychologist or psychiatrist before and had never taken psychiatric medication. He also requested his immediate release because the hospital had not informed the court of his detention within twenty-four hours of his admission. 10.  The District Court decided a few hours later, based solely on this record of the interview, that the applicant’s involuntary admission to the psychiatric hospital was lawful. The decision, after taking note of the content of the record, contains only the following reasoning:
“The court is of the opinion that at the time of the applicant’s admission to [the hospital] he was not able, considering his health condition influenced by his mental illness, to express his qualified consent to his admission to [the hospital] which appears to be necessary to protect his life and health. The court has thus decided that his admission was lawful.”
The decision was served only on the applicant’s court-appointed lawyer and not on the applicant himself. 11.  The applicant appealed arguing that his detention was not justified and that it was not in accordance with law because the hospital had not informed the court of his admission within twenty-four hours. 12.  On 22 February 2007 Brno Regional Court (krajský soud) upheld the first-instance decision. It held that the record of the interview had been sufficient evidence for the first-instance court to base its decision on, given that it had had to decide without delay. It added that the applicant’s claims of disputes in the family had not been concrete enough and that in any case his hospitalisation had been recommended by his general practitioner. It also held that the twenty-four-hour time-limit had not been met but that that did not affect the legality of his detention. 13.  The applicant was released from hospital on 9 March 2007. 14.  On 16 July 2007 the Constitutional Court (Ústavní soud) dismissed the applicant’s constitutional appeal as manifestly ill-founded holding that it could not re-evaluate the evidence heard by the ordinary courts and that their decisions regarding the necessity of the applicant’s detention were not manifestly unreasonable. It further held that the law sets a twenty-four-hour time-limit for a hospital to inform a court of an involuntary admission but that non-compliance with this time-limit did not make the detention unlawful. It added that such a conclusion did not, as a matter of course, exclude the possibility for an applicant to claim damages against the hospital.