6.  The applicant was born in 1953 and lives in Zagreb.
7.  On 21 July 2000 the police temporarily seized the applicant’s vehicle, which had Canadian number plates, suspecting that it had been stolen by an unknown perpetrator.
8.  On 24 July and 1 September 2000 police experts examined the car and established that its vehicle identification number (VIN) was genuine.
9.  In the meantime, on 21 July 2000 the police asked the Canadian Interpol office to check whether the applicant’s car and two other vehicles were being sought by the police in Canada, under whose name they had been registered, whether they had been registered for export, and whether the car documents were genuine.
10.  On 29 December 2000 the police asked the Zagreb State Attorney’s Office (Općinsko državno odvjetništvo u Zagrebu) to decide on the status of the vehicle.
11.  On 23 March 2001 the Zagreb State Attorney’s Office instructed the police to ask for the relevant information from the Canadian Interpol office.
12.  On 18 March 2002 the police asked the Canadian Interpol office to expedite the handling of their request for information.
13.  According to the available data, the Canadian Interpol office did not respond to the request of the police.
14.  By a decision of 2 May 2002 the Zagreb State Attorney’s Office ordered that the car be returned to the applicant, whereupon, on 7 May 2002, the police did so.
15.  On 22 July 2003 the applicant brought a civil action for compensation against the State in the Zagreb Municipal Court (Općinski sud u Zagrebu). He argued that the car had been returned to him in a state of disrepair because it had not been stored properly and, in any event, it had fallen in value during the two years it had been kept by the police, which had been an unreasonably long period. He sought 55,275.95 Croatian kunas (HRK; approximately 7,126 euros (EUR) at the relevant time) in compensation.
16.  The opinion of an expert obtained by the court during the proceedings suggested that the cost of repairing the applicant’s car amounted to HRK 35,275.95 and that its value had dropped by HRK 22,000.
17.  By a judgment of 16 December 2008 the Municipal Court dismissed the applicant’s civil action. Its decision was upheld on 30 June 2009 by the Zagreb County Court (Županijski sud u Zagrebu).
18.  The courts held that the temporary seizure of the applicant’s car had been lawful as it had been based on Articles 177, 184 and 218 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and that therefore the State could not be held liable for damages.
19.  The applicant then concurrently lodged an extraordinary appeal on points of law with the Supreme Court (Vrhovni sud Republike Hrvatske) and a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud Republike Hrvatske).
20.  In his appeal on points of law the applicant asked the Supreme Court to pronounce itself on a legal question which he considered important for the uniform application of the law, namely, whether the owners of objects temporarily seized for the purposes of criminal proceedings were entitled to compensation for the inability to use those objects, in a situation where, eventually, no criminal or minor-offence proceedings had been instituted.
21.  In his constitutional complaint the applicant argued that the judgments of the first and second-instance courts had been in breach of his right of ownership, guaranteed by Article 48 of the Croatian Constitution.
22.  By a decision of 21 February 2012 the Supreme Court declared the applicant’s appeal on points of law inadmissible, finding that the legal question he had raised was not important for the uniform application of the law.
23.  On 23 January 2014 the Constitutional Court dismissed the applicant’s constitutional complaint and served its decision on his representative on 7 February 2014. The court examined the case primarily under Article 29 § 1 of the Croatian Constitution, which guarantees the right to fair procedure, and held that the contested judgments had not been arbitrary. As regards the applicant’s argument that his right of ownership guaranteed by Article 48 of the Constitution had been violated, the Constitutional Court held as follows:
“The Constitutional Court protects the right of ownership at the constitutional level in a manner that prevents any restriction or taking of [property] by the State authorities, unless the restriction or taking is provided for by law ...
... interferences with ownership by other legal subjects (natural or legal persons) are property disputes of a private-law nature. The Constitutional Court also examines such decisions by judicial and other authorities if it finds that the contested decision, having regard to the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, is based on an unacceptable legal view or is so wrong and lacking in sound legal reasoning that it can be described as arbitrary.
The Constitutional Court did not find any such circumstances in the complainant’s case.
Therefore, the complainant’s right of ownership guaranteed by Article 48 of the Constitution was not breached by the contested judgments.”