CASE OF MANGO v. ITALY
Violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 - Protection of property (Article 1 para. 1 of Protocol No. 1 - Peaceful enjoyment of possessions)
Krzysztof Wojtyczek;Ledi Bianku;Paul Mahoney
5. The applicant was born in 1929 and lived in Moiano. 6. The facts of the case may be summarised as follows. 7. The applicant was the owner of a plot of land in Moiano. The land in issue was recorded on the land register as folio no. 11, parcels no. 392 and 396. 8. On 18 June 1987, a decree authorising the Moiano Municipality to take possession of a portion of the applicants’ land was issued for a period of three years, through an expedited procedure and on the basis of a public-interest declaration, in order to begin the construction of a road. 9. On 14 July 1987 the authorities took physical possession of the land. 10. By a writ served on 1 October 1990, the applicant brought an action for damages against the Moiano Municipality before the Benevento District Court. He alleged that the occupation of the land was illegal and that the construction work had been completed without there having been a formal expropriation of the land and payment of compensation. He claimed a sum corresponding to the market value of the land and a further sum in damages for the loss of enjoyment of the land during the period of lawful occupation. 11. On an unspecified date the court ordered an expert valuation of the land. In a report submitted in September 1992, the expert concluded that the occupied land covered a surface area of 109 square metres. The expert further concluded that the market value of the land on the date the land had been irreversibly transformed, which he identified as having occurred in May 1998, corresponded to 50,000 Italian lire (ITL) (EUR 25.80) per square metre. 12. By a judgment delivered on 9 March 2005 and filed with the court registry on 18 March 2005, the Benevento District Court declared that the possession of the land, which had been initially authorised, had become unlawful as of 14 July 1990. It found that the land had been irreversibly transformed by the public works. As a result, in accordance with the constructive-expropriation rule (occupazione acquisitiva or accessione invertita), the applicants had been deprived of their property, by virtue of its irreversible alteration, on the date on which the possession had ceased to be lawful. In the light of those considerations, the court concluded that the applicant was entitled to compensation in consideration for the loss of ownership caused by the unlawful occupation. 13. The court drew on the expert valuation and considered that the market value of the land, which in 1998 corresponded to ITL 50,000 (EUR 25.82) per square metre, corresponded to ITL 57,000 (EUR 29.43) per square metre on the date the occupation had become unlawful in 1990. 14. The court held that the applicant was entitled to compensation, calculated in accordance with Law no. 662 of 1996, which had entered into force in the meantime, in the sum of ITL 2,997,500 (equivalent to EUR 1,548.08), to be adjusted for inflation, plus statutory interest. 15. The court further awarded the applicant ITL 408,750 (equivalent to EUR 211.10) as compensation for the damage occasioned by the unavailability of the land during the period from the beginning of the lawful occupation (June 1987) until the date of loss of ownership (July 1990), as well as ITL 5,000,000 (EUR 2,582.28) for the damage caused by the building works and ITL 3,000,000 (EUR 1,549.37) as compensation for the decrease in the value of the adjoining land. 16. The judgment became final in May 2006.