CASE OF MRÁZ AND OTHERS v. SLOVAKIA
Violation of Article 6 - Right to a fair trial (Article 6 - Civil proceedings;Article 6-1 - Fair hearing)
Ján Šikuta;Johannes Silvis;Josep Casadevall;Kristina Pardalos;Luis López Guerra
5. The particulars of the applicants appear in the appendix. 6. This application and three others (nos. 18803/10, 42812/10 and 48554/10) concern the regularisation of the relationship between ownership and use of real property located in the cadastral area of Košice-Sever. 7. Certain land in that area was expropriated in the 1980s by the (then socialist) State and a public sports centre was built on it. The sports centre comprises buildings and various other facilities, such as a tennis court, a grandstand, a water station and paved areas. 8. After the post 1989 political, constitutional and legal changes, litigation took place with a view to resolving various property claims made by the original owners (or their legal successors) against the entities that owned or operated the sports centre or various parts of it. 9. The land concerned is divided into a number of plots with various owners, many of whom are linked by family relations and history, and who had the same legal representation in the above-mentioned proceedings. Their lawsuits followed a similar pattern, but sometimes had varying results, and included the following proceedings. 10. The applicants in the present case are successors in title to a plot of land in the above-mentioned area, having inherited their title from the original owners, who died in 1970 and 1997. 11. On 17 May 1994 the latter of the original owners lodged an action against a sports club seeking to obtain a court order for the removal of the constructions on the land. The principal line of argument was that the expropriation decision of 24 February 1984 was invalid in law. The applicants were therefore the lawful owners of the land in question, in particular of plots nos. 10620/1 and 10620/2 (recorded on sheet no. 6946 in the “old” records), and that the defendant had no lawful title to have the constructions on the applicants’ land. 12. The action was subsequently amended to state that, alternatively, the applicants sought a judicial ruling establishing an easement on their land for the benefit of the owner of the sports centre in return for financial compensation to be paid to the applicants. It was also extended to two more defendants: the municipality concerned and a private company. 13. The action was examined and determined at first instance by the Košice I District Court (Okresný súd). In its judgment (rozsudok) of 2 April 2009, the District Court acknowledged that (i) the expropriation of 1984 was legally ineffective on account of procedural flaws; (ii) as a consequence, the applicants were the owners of the land in question; (iii) the constructions on it had been built without a valid legal title in so far as the land was concerned; and (iv) the applicants were eligible to seek redress under general civil law, that is to say Article 135c of the Civil Code (Law no. 40/1964 Coll., as amended), which was not subject to any statute of limitation, unlike the special legislation on restitution, which contained specific time-limits (see paragraph 23 below). 14. The District Court further held that, for practical reasons, it was out of the question to regularise the situation by establishing the applicants as the owners of the constructions and ordering them to pay the current owners financial compensation. Furthermore, in the circumstances, it was likewise not practical to order the physical removal of the constructions in question. 15. However, contrary to the applicants’ assertions, the District Court found that no easement could be established on the land. The bone of contention was the legal nature of the constructions concerned. Unlike in construction law, in civil law those constructions could not be considered as “buildings” (stavba) in legal terms. An easement over land could however only be established for the benefit of the owner of a building in the given sense. In that connection, the courts relied on Article 135c § 3 of the Civil Code (Law no. 40/1964 Coll., as amended) (see paragraph 20 below). The court also noted that it was bound by the legal classification of the applicants’ claim. It concluded that since the constructions on their specific plots of land were not buildings, the claim had to be dismissed. 16. The applicants challenged the first-instance judgment by means of an appeal (odvolanie) to the Košice Regional Court (Krajský súd).They argued, in particular, that the District Court had failed to appreciate that the property in question was part of a large complex serving a single purpose and that the claims raised in respect of that property were structurally identical and had been raised separately only because they concerned different plots of land with different owners. 17. On 10 May 2010 the Regional Court, sitting in chambers, upheld the first-instance judgment, albeit on different grounds. It concurred with the District Court that the expropriation of 1984 was legally ineffective. As a consequence, the State was to be considered as having taken the land in question without legal title within the meaning of section 6(1)(p) of the Act on adjustment of ownership rights in respect of land and other agricultural property (Law no. 229/1991 Coll., as amended – “the Land Ownership Act”) and as having subsequently acquired its title by way of prescription. The restitution of land in such circumstances fell under the regime of the said legislation and any claims for it had to be lodged by 31 December 1992 at the latest (see paragraphs 21 et seq. below). The applicants had failed to pursue that course of action. Asserting their property rights under general civil law, as the applicants had done, was not permissible. In support of its conclusions, the Regional Court referred specifically to the judgments of the Supreme Court concerning appeals on points of law in unrelated but similar cases nos. 3 Cdo 120/03 (of 29 April 2004) and 4 Cdo 130/2007 (of 25 February 2009) (see paragraphs 30 et seq. below). 18. On 29 July 2010 the applicants lodged a complaint with the Constitutional Court (Ústavný súd) under Article 127 § 1 of the Constitution (Constitutional Law no. 460/1992 Coll., as amended). They considered the dismissal of their action arbitrary and alleged that their rights under, inter alia, Article 6 § 1 of the Convention (access, fairness, adequate reasoning) and the constitutional equivalent of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 had been violated. Among other things, they argued that – on the specific facts – their case fell outside the purview of the restitution laws cited in the Regional Court’s judgment and that the existence of the restitution laws as leges speciales did not exclude the application of the rules on protection of property rights under the Civil Code as a lex generalis. In addition, the applicants submitted that judicial practice had varied. They referred to the District Court’s judgment in case no. 15C 251/94 and its judgments in a number of other cases concerning the same sports centre, in which the application of general civil law in an identical context had been accepted. Their specific arguments about such differing practice had gone unanswered. Moreover, the applicants emphasised that it had been sixteen years since the introduction of their action, a protracted period for which they bore no responsibility. They considered that, therefore, any case-law that may have meanwhile been established should not be detrimental to them. 19. On 12 May 2011 the Constitutional Court declared the complaint inadmissible as being manifestly ill founded. It cited extensively from the Regional Court’s judgment and concluded that its assessment of the case conformed to the Constitution. As to the applicants’ argument concerning the differing judicial practice, the Constitutional Court noted that the applicants’ action had been lodged sixteen years before the Regional Court’s judgment; that, since then, the decision-making practice had evolved; and that, at the relevant time, it had supported the Regional Court’s interpretation. The decision was served on the applicants’ lawyer on 28 June 2011.