5.  The applicant was born in 1956 and lives in Novigrad.
6.  By a contract concluded in 1971 between a company, G.P. (hereinafter “the claimant”), and the Novigrad Municipality certain plots of land were given to the former for its permanent use with a view to the construction of residential buildings thereon. These plots of land were registered in the land register as being publicly owned. In accordance with the contract, the claimant built residential buildings and sold all of them.
7.  During and after the construction of the residential buildings, the claimant instituted several sets of land register correction proceedings with regard to the land at issue in order to harmonise the record in the land register with the new situation. In one of the land register correction proceedings the Novigrad Municipality objected to the claimant’s application for a correction and therefore on 2 October 2000 the Land Registry Department of the Buje Municipal Court instructed the parties to initiate civil proceedings.
8.  On 6 October 2000 the claimant brought a civil action before the Buje Municipal Court (Općinski sud u Bujama) against the Novigrad Municipality (hereinafter “the defendant”), seeking that the data concerning the size of certain plots of land be corrected in the land register of that court. Specifically, it complained that during the delineation – that is to say the process of subdividing the larger parcels into smaller ones – one part of the plots of land at issue had been registered as a public good (javno dobro). In its civil action the claimant indicated the value of the claim as 5,000 Croatian kunas (HRK).
9.  Meanwhile, on 27 December 1999, the applicant and the claimant had concluded a purchase agreement in respect of the plots of land that surrounded the residential buildings the claimant had built and that were the subject of the proceedings instituted on 6 October 2000.
10.  On 23 October 2000 the applicant asked to join the claimant in the proceedings as an intervener since she had bought some of the plots of land at issue.
11.  At the hearing held on 14 June 2001 the Buje Municipal Court established that the claimant had raised the value of the claim to HRK 105,000 in its submissions of 4 June 2001. The defendant did not object to that valuation. After that, the defendant gave its reply to the claim on the record. Furthermore, the first-instance court adopted a decision allowing the applicant to join the claimant in the proceedings as an intervener because it held that she had a legal interest.
12.  On 25 February 2005 the Buje Municipal Court allowed the claim.
13.  Upon an appeal by the defendant lodged on 5 February 2007 the Pula County Court (Županijski sud u Puli) quashed the first-instance judgment and remitted the case for a fresh examination.
14.  On 26 May 2009 the first-instance court dismissed the claim as ill-founded. In its reasoning it stated, inter alia, that at the moment of the delineation of the disputed parcels the claimant had not had any right to the property at issue and therefore by its correction the claimant would have become an owner of the property which he had never been given for permanent use. Further to this, the court had assessed the costs of the proceedings according to the value of the claim set at HRK 105,000 at the hearing on 14 June 2001. It ordered the claimant to bear these costs. At the bottom of the last page of that judgment was a note stating that the case had been conducted and the judgment had been drafted by J.G., the court administrator (sudski savjetnik).
15.  The applicant lodged an appeal complaining, inter alia, that her case had been heard and decided by a court administrator who had not been authorised to conduct the impugned proceedings under the relevant procedural rules. She proposed that evidence be heard from J.G., as well as the parties to the proceedings and their legal counsel. The applicant further complained of the assessment of the amount of the litigation costs. She was of the opinion that the value of the claim was the one indicated in the civil action, namely HRK 5,000, which should have been taken into account by the first-instance court when calculating the costs.
16.  On 18 October 2010 the Pula County Court upheld the first-instance judgment. It held, inter alia, that the value of the claim was the one established at the hearing on 14 June 2001, namely HRK 105,000, because the claimant had increased the value before the defendant had begun litigation on the merits. Furthermore, the second-instance court in its reasoning had stated that the case file had shown that the proceedings had been conducted by a trial judge in the presence of a court administrator.
17.  The applicant then lodged simultaneously an appeal on points of law and a constitutional complaint. She complained, among other things, that her case had neither been heard nor decided by a tribunal established by law because the proceedings had been conducted and the judgment drafted and pronounced by a court administrator. She stated that the judge had not been present at the hearings and that the judge had signed the records of the hearings afterwards.
18.  On 14 October 2011 the Supreme Court declared the applicant’s appeal on points of law inadmissible ratione valoris, considering that the value of the claim did not reach the statutory threshold of HRK 100,000. It held, contrary to the lower courts’ findings, that the value of the claim was the one indicated in the civil action because the claimant would have been allowed to alter that value only if it had also amended its claim at the same time.
19.  On 2 December 2011 the applicant informed the Constitutional Court that her appeal on points of law had been declared inadmissible and that she wished to add the Supreme Court’s decision to her constitutional complaint. She argued that the Supreme Court had applied the relevant procedural provisions concerning the value of the claim in an arbitrary manner.
20.  On 29 March 2012 the Constitutional Court dismissed the applicant’s constitutional complaint as manifestly ill-founded.