CASE OF VARJONEN v. FINLAND
Violation of Article 6 - Right to a fair trial (Article 6 - Administrative proceedings;Article 6-1 - Reasonable time)
Nona Tsotsoria;Päivi Hirvelä
4. The applicant was born in 1962 and lives in Pomarkku. 5. On 9 June 2005 the applicant’s husband was injured in a car accident and he received insurance benefits from an insurance company. However, on 2 and 5 March 2006 the insurance company refused his applications for compensation for rehabilitation. On 30 March and 4 April 2006 the husband appealed against these decisions to the Insurance Court (vakuutusoikeus, försäkringsdomstolen). The husband died on 3 August 2006 but the applicant and the estate decided to continue the appeals. 6. On 3 May 2010 the Insurance Court rejected the appeals. No appeal lies against these decisions. The judgment of the Insurance Court was sent to the applicant on 1 June 2010. 7. On 26 February 2010 the applicant lodged a complaint with the Parliamentary Ombudsman (eduskunnan oikeusasiamies, riksdagens justitieombudsman) complaining, inter alia, about the excessive length of the proceedings in the Insurance Court. 8. On 17 November 2011 the Ombudsman gave a reply, after having requested a statement from the Insurance Court which included reports from the referendary and the judges responsible for examining the applicant’s case. The Ombudsman considered that the proceedings in the applicant’s case had taken, in total, a long time. However, the Ombudsman accepted the reasons given by the Insurance Court, namely that the case had been exceptionally extensive, complex and time-consuming. The Insurance Court examined the case as a first instance, which required more preparation than when it examined appeals as a second instance. Also the case file had been incomplete and several requests for information had been made. The applicant, on her part, had sent a considerable number of documents during the course of the proceedings, which had also contributed to the length. The Ombudsman considered that there had been no particular inactivity in the Insurance Court. Hence it considered that, despite the lengthy proceedings, there had not been unjustified delays in the course of the proceedings. 9. On 20 October 2010 the applicant initiated extraordinary proceedings before the Supreme Court (korkein oikeus, högsta domstolen), requesting that the decisions of the Insurance Court be quashed because the referendary in the Insurance Court had been biased. 10. On 29 July 2011 the Supreme Court dismissed the application for being outside its competence. As the proceedings before the Insurance Court were administrative, it was the Supreme Administrative Court (korkein hallinto-oikeus, högsta förvaltningsdomstolen) that was competent to examine an extraordinary appeal concerning an alleged procedural flaw. 11. On 5 October 2011 the applicant lodged an extraordinary appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court, claiming that the proceedings before the Insurance Court had been flawed due to the partiality of the referendary and the wrong application of law. 12. On 31 May 2012 the Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the complaint concerning the wrong application of law without examining the merits and rejected the partiality complaint after having examined it. The Supreme Administrative Court considered that the applicant had reasoned her complaint about the referendary’s partiality only with the fact that she had complained about the referendary to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. The court was of the opinion that the mere fact that the applicant had complained about the referendary to the Ombudsman did not put the impartiality of the referendary into question.