CASE OF JUREŠA v. CROATIA
No violation of Article 6 - Right to a fair trial (Article 6 - Civil proceedings;Article 6-1 - Access to court)
Jon Fridrik Kjølbro;Nebojša Vučinić;Paul Lemmens;Georges Ravarani;Ksenija Turković
5. The applicant was born in 1977 and lives in Osijek. 6. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows. 7. On 6 November 2000, in inheritance proceedings following the applicant’s grandmother’s death, the applicant’s relative, M.J., and the applicant’s father were declared the beneficiaries in respect of a house, which was not registered in the land register, by a decision of the Zabok Municipal Court (Općinski sud u Zaboku). 8. On 18 October 2007 M.J. brought a civil action against the applicant in the Zabok Municipal Court (Općinski sud u Zaboku) asking that court to recognise his ownership of a share of half of an inherited piece of property and to order the applicant to allow him to register his ownership in the land register. He set the value of the dispute (vrijednost predmeta spora) at 110,000 Croatian kunas (HRK). 9. In the proceedings before the first-instance court, on 5 November 2007 the applicant contested the value of the dispute and suggested that it be set at HRK 300,000. 10. At the hearing held on 23 January 2008 the applicant, inter alia, withdrew her objection to the value of the dispute as indicated by the claimant, and stated that she agreed with it. 11. In its judgment of 25 April 2008 the Zabok Municipal Court accepted M.J.’s claim. 12. The applicant lodged an appeal with the Zlatar County Court (Županijski sud u Zlataru) and on 16 September 2009 the second-instance court dismissed her appeal as ill-founded, upholding the first-instance judgment. 13. On 24 November 2009 the applicant lodged an appeal on points of law with the Supreme Court (Vrhovni sud Republike Hrvatske), challenging the lower courts’ judgments. 14. On 27 May 2010 the Supreme Court declared the applicant’s appeal on points of law inadmissible ratione valoris. It interpreted M.J.’s civil action as being composed of two separate claims arising from different factual and legal bases - the first one for recognition of ownership, and the second for obtaining an order securing the registration of his ownership in the land register (hereinafter “the issuance of a clausula intabulandi”). The Supreme Court thus halved the value of the dispute and held that the value of each claim did not reach the necessary ratione valoris threshold of HRK 100,001 (approximately 13,300 euros (EUR)) for an appeal on points of law to be admissible. The relevant part of this decision reads as follows: “The claimant in his civil action indicated the value of the dispute as HRK 110,000. Pursuant to section 37(2) of the CPA [(Civil Procedure Act)], if the claims in the civil action arise from a variety of grounds, or different claimants put forward individual claims or individual claims are raised against several defendants, the value of the dispute must be established in accordance with the value of each individual claim. In the instant case the claimant made two non-monetary claims, one concerning property rights - for recognition of ownership -, and a claim under the law on obligations - for the issuance of a clausula intabulandi , namely for obtaining an order securing registration of his ownership in the land register. Therefore, the value of the dispute has to be established in relation to the value of the dispute of each claim. Consequently, the value of the dispute of each claim ... has to be established by dividing the indicated unique value of the dispute by [these] two [claims]. Given that the claimant indicated the [unique] value of the dispute as HRK 110,000, and that this amount should be divided by [the number of the claims], the value of the dispute of each claim does not exceed the amount of 100,000. It follows that an appeal on points of law by the defendant is inadmissible.” 15. The applicant then lodged a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud Republike Hrvatske), arguing that M.J.’s action had two aspects which could not be separated, and that the Supreme Court’s decision finding that the case concerned two separate claims had therefore been arbitrary and had violated her right to a fair hearing, in particular her right of access to the Supreme Court, as guaranteed under Article 29 of the Constitution. 16. On 17 February 2011 the Constitutional Court dismissed the applicant’s constitutional complaint. It held that the applicant in her constitutional complaint “did not demonstrate that the Supreme Court had failed to respect the provisions of the Constitution concerning human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely that it had applied relevant law in an arbitrary manner” and that therefore “the present case did not raise a constitutional issue.” Its decision was served on the applicant’s representative on 3 March 2011.