Source: http://echr.ketse.com/doc/24549.03-en-20050301/view/
Timestamp: 2020-01-27 07:50:20
Document Index: 133264017

Matched Legal Cases: ['Application no. 24549', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 152', '§ 47', '§ 1', '§ 157', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 3']

MICHALAK v. POLAND About Project
Application no. 24549/03
by Tadeusz MICHALAK
Having regard to the above application lodged on 23 July 2003,
1. The applicant, Mr Tadeusz Michalak, is a Polish national who was born in 1930 and lives in Warsaw, Poland. He was represented before the Court by Mr W. Hermeliński, a lawyer practising in Warsaw. The respondent Government were represented by Mr J. Wołąsiewicz, of the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs.
3. In 1986 the applicant filed with the Warsaw District Court an application for eviction of his tenants.
4. Subsequently, the eviction proceedings were stayed as the tenants initiated court proceedings on 14 January 1987 in which they claimed a title to the property.
5. On 19 February 1987 the proceedings concerning the title to the property were stayed. On 10 January 1989 the Warsaw Regional Court resumed the proceedings. The first hearing took place on 23 October 1991. Between 23 October 1991 and 29 May 1992 eleven hearings took place.
6. On 21 May 1992 the Warsaw District Court dismissed the tenants' action concerning the title to the property. On 10 December 1992 the Warsaw Regional Court dismissed their appeal against that decision.
7. On 8 June 1993, the Minister of Justice filed with the Supreme Court an extraordinary appeal against the judgment of 10 December 1992. On 16 December 1993 the Supreme Court quashed the impugned judgment and remitted the case to the trial court.
8. On 5 July 1995 a hearing took place before the Warsaw District Court. Hearings fixed for April, May and October 1996 were cancelled because the parties had not been served with the summonses.
9. The next hearings took place on 7 March 1997 and 25 February 1999. The hearing scheduled for 7 March 1999 was adjourned. In 2001 hearings were held on 8 January and 7 December. In 2002 hearings took place in February, April and June. On 2 April, 8 May and 2 December 2003 the Warsaw District Court held hearings.
10. On 26 February 2004 the trial court gave a decision in which it dismissed the application for a title to the property in question. On 11 May 2004 one of the participants appealed.
11. Both sets of the proceedings are pending.
24. The applicant complained under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention about the length of civil proceedings. He further complained under Article 13 that he did not have an effective domestic remedy to complain about the excessive length of the proceedings.
26. The Court first notes that, in so far as the facts of the case relate to the period before 1 May 1993, the date on which the recognition by Poland of the right of individual petition took effect, the Court has no temporal jurisdiction to deal with the application.
27. The Government maintained that the applicant had failed to exhaust domestic remedies as he had neither lodged a complaint about the breach of the right to a trial within a reasonable time under the 2004 Act nor had he claimed compensation under the relevant provisions of the Civil Code, in particular Article 417. The Government invited the Court to reject the application as being inadmissible.
28. The Government considered that a complaint about the breach of the right to a trial within a reasonable time was accessible to the applicant. In particular, under the transitional provision of section 18 of the 2004 Act, read in conjunction with section 12, the applicant could ask for just satisfaction for the alleged violation of the reasonable time requirement and seek acceleration of the impugned proceedings. What was more, he could obtain further redress through a compensatory remedy, namely by bringing a civil action under Article 417 of the Civil Code, pursuant to section 15 of the 2004 Act.
29. As to the time at which that remedy had become accessible, the Government stressed that many factors in the instant case justified the departure from the general principle that the exhaustion requirement must be assessed with reference to the date on which the application was lodged with the Court. They contended that the ratio legis of the 2004 Act was to enable the Polish authorities to remedy, and to redress at domestic level, violations of the right to a hearing within a reasonable time, and consequently, to reduce the number of the applications lodged with the Strasbourg Court.
30. The applicant replied that he should not be required to exhaust the remedy introduced by the 2004 Act as the effectiveness of it had not yet been established by the domestic courts.
31. Furthermore, the applicant stressed that, according to the 2004 Act, the ordinary courts were competent to examine the complaints. In his opinion, the Supreme Court or the Constitutional Court would have given better guarantees of independence and impartiality. Also, the remedy in question was not effective because a finding that the complaint was justified would not necessarily result in just satisfaction being awarded. In any event, the award could not exceed 10,000 Polish zlotys (PLN), a much lower sum than normally be awarded by the Court in Strasbourg. In the applicant's opinion, the early practice of the domestic courts proved their reluctance to award just satisfaction.
32. The purpose of the exhaustion rule, contained in Article 35 § 1 of the Convention, is to afford the Contracting States the opportunity of preventing or putting right the violations alleged against them, before those allegations are submitted to the Court. That rule is based on the assumption, reflected in Article 13 of the Convention – with which it has close affinity – that there is an effective remedy available in respect of the alleged breach in the domestic system (see, for example, Kudła v. Poland [GC], no. 30210/96, § 152, ECHR 2000-XI).
33. The only remedies which Article 35 of the Convention requires to be exhausted are those that relate to the breaches alleged and at the same time are available and sufficient. The existence of such remedies must be sufficiently certain not only in theory but also in practice, failing which they will lack the requisite accessibility and effectiveness (see, among many authorities, Mifsud v. France (dec.) [GC], no. 57220/00, ECHR 2002-VIII).
34. Furthermore, in the context of Article 13 of the Convention, in the Kudła judgment, the Court has held that remedies available to a litigant at the domestic level for raising a complaint about a length of proceedings are “effective” if they prevent the alleged violation or its continuation, or provide adequate redress for any violation that has already occurred.
35. It is true that, according to the “generally recognised principles of international law”, there may be special circumstances which absolve the applicant from the obligation to exhaust the domestic remedies at his disposal. However, the Court points out that the existence of mere doubts as to the prospects of success of a particular remedy which is not obviously futile is not a valid reason for failing to exhaust domestic remedies (see, Giacometti and Others v. Italy (dec.), no. 34939/97, ECHR 2001-XII).
36. The assessment of whether domestic remedies have been exhausted is normally carried out with reference to the date on which the application was lodged with it. However, as the Court has held on many occasions, this rule is subject to exceptions, which may be justified by the particular circumstances of each case (see Baumann v. France, no. 33592/96, § 47, 22 May 2001 and Brusco v. Italy (dec.), no. 69789/01, ECHR 2001-IX). In particular, the Court had previously departed from this general rule in cases against Italy, Croatia and Slovakia concerning remedies against the excessive length of the proceedings (see Brusco, cited above, Nogolica v. Croatia (dec.), no. 77784/01, ECHR 2002-VIII, Andrášik and Others v. Slovakia (dec.), nos. 57984/00, 60226/00, 60237/00, 60242/00, 60679/00, 60680/00 and 68563/01, ECHR 2002-IX).
37. The Court must accordingly determine whether the Government's objection that domestic remedies have not been exhausted is well-founded in the instant case.
In this connection, the Court observes that the civil proceedings to which the applicant was a party are pending before the domestic courts and that the Court had not yet adopted a decision concerning the admissibility of the case.
38. As regards the effectiveness of the remedy, the Court notes that, in accordance with section 12, the purpose of the complaint about the unreasonable length of the proceedings is twofold. Firstly, the applicant may obtain a finding of an infringement of the “reasonable-time” principle and, where appropriate, may be awarded just satisfaction in the amount not exceeding PLN 10,000. Secondly, he can request the court to instruct the court which examines the merits of the case to take certain measures within a fixed time-limit and thus to accelerate the impugned proceedings (see paragraph 16 above). In this connection, the Court takes note of the Supreme Court's resolution which strengthened the application of the 2004 Act and provided that its provisions were applicable retroactively to the delays that had occurred before the date of its entry into force and had not yet been remedied (see paragraph 23 above).
39. The applicant argued that the remedy in question could not be regarded as effective. In particular, he stressed that the amount of just satisfaction which could be awarded to the complainant was limited to PLN 10,000. He also considered that the fact that the ordinary courts were competent to examine the complaints did not give sufficient appearances of independence and impartiality. However, the Court notes that, as explained above, in addition to the just-satisfaction which can be awarded under section 12 of the 2004 Act, the complainant has a right to lodge a civil claim and thus seek full compensation (see paragraph 38 above). In this connection the Court reiterates that the “effectiveness” of a “remedy” within the meaning of Articles 13 and 35 § 1 does not depend on the certainty of a favourable outcome for the applicant. Nor does the authority referred to in that provision necessarily have to be a judicial authority; but if it is not, its powers and the guarantees which it affords are relevant in determining whether the remedy before it is effective (see Kudła, cited above, § 157). The fact that in Poland it is for the ordinary courts of law, not for the Supreme or Constitutional Court, to entertain complaints under the 2004 Act cannot itself be considered an element capable of undermining the effectiveness of the remedy pleaded by the Government.
In the light of the above, the Court is not persuaded by the arguments submitted by the applicant and considers that he has failed to adduce any particular circumstances that would indicate that the remedy in question would have no reasonable prospect of success.
40. That being so, the Court basing its conclusions on the assessment of the provisions of the 2004 Act as they stand, considers that the complaint about a breach of the right to a trial within a reasonable time is capable of preventing the alleged violation of the right to a hearing within a reasonable time or its continuation, and of providing adequate redress for any violation that has already occurred, thus satisfies the “effectiveness” test established in the Kudła judgment.
41. As to the question whether the applicant should be required to exhaust the above mentioned remedy notwithstanding that the 2004 Act entered into force after he had lodged the present application with the Court, the Court acknowledges that, as stated above (see paragraph 36), the assessment of whether domestic remedies have been exhausted is normally made with reference to the date of the introduction of the application. However, the Court considers that there are several elements which favour an exception from this rule in the present case. As explained above, under section 5 of the 2004 Act, a complaint about the excessive length of the proceedings should be lodged when the proceedings are still pending (see paragraph 37). However, section 18 extends the applicability of the remedy to the proceedings that might meanwhile have ended. That section refers explicitly to the applications already lodged with the Court in Strasbourg and is therefore designed to bring within the jurisdiction of the national courts, within 6 months after the entry into force of the 2004 Act, all applications currently pending before the Court that have not yet been declared admissible.
42. It is true that the 2004 Act came into force on 17 September 2004 and that the long-term practice of the domestic courts could not yet be established. However, the wording of the 2004 Act clearly indicates that it is specifically designed to address the issue of excessive length of proceedings before the domestic courts. The Court had previously adopted the same position and had examined the effectiveness of remedy before the practice of the domestic courts in similar, in substance, Croatian cases (see, Nogolica, cited above, and Slavicek v. Croatia (dec.), no. 20862/02, ECHR 2002-VII).
43. In the light of the foregoing, the Court considers that the applicant was required by Article 35 § 1 of the Convention to lodge a complaint about a breach of the right to a trial within a reasonable time with the domestic court, under the 2004 Act, and to ask for expedition of the proceedings and just-satisfaction. Furthermore, it finds no exceptional circumstances capable of exempting him from the obligation to exhaust domestic remedies.
44. It follows that this complaint must be rejected under Article 35 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies.
45. The applicant also complained that he had no effective domestic remedy at his disposal for his complaint under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, as required under Article 13 of the Convention, which reads as follows:
46. The Court has already found that the 2004 Act does provide the applicant with an effective remedy in respect of the complaint about the length of the proceedings. That finding is valid in the context of the complaint under Article 13 of the Convention.
47. It follows that this complaint is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.
MICHALAK v. POLAND DECISION