LALIĆ v. CROATIA
Inadmissible
Jon Fridrik Kjølbro;Julia Laffranque;Nebojša Vučinić;Paul Lemmens;Stéphanie Mourou-Vikström;Ksenija Turković
1. The applicant, Ms Ljubica Lalić, is a Croatian national, who was born in 1950 and lives in Šibenik. She was represented before the Court by Mr I. Labura, a lawyer practising in Šibenik. 2. The Croatian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Ms Š. Stažnik. 3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows. 4. The applicant’s husband was an employee of the “Slavonac” company. On 24 September 1998 the applicant and her husband, as guarantors of a loan to the company, entered into an agreement with the Jadranska bank of Šibenik to use their house as security for a loan of 200,000 Croatian kunas. It was stipulated that unless the debtor paid its outstanding debts within five years, the creditor bank was entitled to institute enforcement proceedings for payment of the debt through the sale of the applicants’ house. 5. On 13 March 2005 the applicant brought a civil action before the Šibenik Municipal Court against the said bank and the “Slavonac” company, claiming that neither she nor her husband had ever signed the fiduciary agreement in respect of their house and that she had learned about it for the first time in the inheritance proceedings instituted after the death of her husband. 6. The Municipal Court commissioned an expert in graphology, who confirmed that the signatures on the said agreement were indeed those of the applicant and her husband, and on 15 February 2008 the Municipal Court dismissed the applicant’s claim. This judgment was upheld by the Šibenik County Court on 27 September 2010 and the Supreme Court on 2 July 2013. 7. The applicant’s subsequent constitutional complaint was dismissed on 12 March 2014. 8. In the meantime, on 18 April 2006 the Jadranska bank of Šibenik applied to the Šibenik Municipal Court for enforcement of the fiduciary agreement against the applicant. It sought her eviction on the basis of a report of 21 February 2006 and its appendix, certified by a notary public on 9 February 2006 (Zapisnik o posvjedočenju činjenica s potvrdom kojeg je sastavio javni bilježnik i dopuna Potvrde). Those documents had been issued in connection with the above-mentioned fiduciary agreement in respect of the applicant’s and her husband’s house. 9. On 26 May an eviction order against the applicant was issued by the Šibenik Municipal Court. 10. On 14 June 2006 the applicant lodged an appeal against the eviction order, referring to the above-mentioned civil proceedings, which were still pending. The appeal was dismissed by the Šibenik County Court on 26 February 2007. However, on 9 October 2007 the eviction was postponed. 11. On 20 January 2012 the creditor asked the court to postpone the applicant’s eviction until further notice.