Постановление Европейского суда по правам человека от 30.07.2009 "Дело "Светлана Орлова (Svetlana Orlova) против Российской Федерации" [рус., англ.]

nds of proceedings. It is true that when the case was pending before the courts, it was examined without any major delays. However, the proceedings were delayed by the repeated referrals of the case for fresh examination to the first-instance court either by the appeal or the supervisory-review courts. Thus, the proceedings were split into several parts which were spread over almost seven years. In this respect the Court reiterates that the Convention and its Protocols must be interpreted as guaranteeing rights which are practical and effective as opposed to theoretical and illusory. The right to have one's claim examined within a reasonable time would be devoid of all sense if domestic courts examined a case numerous times, by shifting it from one court to another, even if at the end the accumulated length of proceedings did not appear particularly excessive. Therefore, the fact that in the present case the aggregated length of the proceedings does not appear very long at first glance does not absolve the domestic authorities of their responsibility to account for the reasonableness of the length of proceedings. The Court recalls that it is incumbent on respondent States to organise their legal systems in such a way that their courts can meet the requirements of Article 6 of the Convention, including the obligation to hear cases within a reasonable time (see {Surmeli} v. Germany [GC], No. 75529/01, § 129, 8 June 2006).
48. The Court observes that there were two major deficiencies in the proceedings at hand. Firstly, in the first three rounds of proceedings the case was examined by courts which could not be considered impartial and independent. That fact was acknowledged by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, which on 7 October 2005 quashed the decisions adopted in the applicant's case and referred the case to a court situated in a different region. In that respect the Court notes that since the beginning of the proceedings the applicant had lodged several requests with the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in which she asked for her case to be referred to a different court to guarantee her right to have her case examined by an independent and impartial tribunal. However, on 4 March 2003 the Supreme Court replied that there were no grounds for referral, and on 25 June and 19 September 2003 the Supreme Court refused to deal with her requests since her appeal had been already examined.
49. Furthermore, after the case was referred to the Sovetskiy District Court of Krasnodar, it was examined in three more rounds. In the first of them, the courts held that the applicant had abused her rights when she refused all positions offered to her and on that ground they dismissed her claims. However, that decision was quashed by a supervisory review court which indicated that dismissal of the applicant had been unlawful and referred the case for a fresh examination to the first-instance court. In the new proceedings the first-instance court did not implement the instructions of the higher court and that failure resulted in another round of proceedings. Although the Court is not in a position to analyse the juridical quality of the domestic courts' decisions, it considers that, since the remittal of cases for re-examination is frequently ordered as a result of errors committed by lower courts, the repetition of such orders within one set of proceedings may disclose a serious deficiency in the judicial system (see Wierciszewska v. Poland, No. 41431/98, § 46, 25 November 2003; Matica v. Romania, No. 19567/02, § 24, 2 November 2006; and Falimonov v. Russia, No. 11549/02, § 58, 25 March 2008). The fact that the domestic courts heard the case several times did not absolve them from complying with the reasonable time requirement of Article 6 § 1 (see Litoselitis v. Greece, No. 62771/00, § 32, 5 February 2004).
50. Having regard to the above, the Court considers that the failure of the dom

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