Постановление Европейского суда по правам человека от 04.11.2010 «Дело Пугач и другие (Pugach and others) против России» [англ.]

of the Convention where the applicant lost interest in pursuing the case before the Court, but not before the national authorities.
19. There is nothing in the case files to suggest that the applicants in the present case lost interest in pursuing this case before the Court. Accordingly, the objection must be rejected.
20. The Court further notes that the applications are not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention. It further notes that they are not inadmissible on any other grounds. They must therefore be declared admissible.

B. Merits

21. The Government asserted that the final judgments were quashed to correct a fundamental judicial error, because the lower courts had awarded the payments against a wrong State authority. The domestic law of procedure did not provide for any other way to correct the miscarriage of justice apart from the supervisory-review proceedings. In any event, there was no interference with the applicants' property rights, because the judgments had been enforced and the sums paid pursuant to them had never been claimed back from the applicants.
22. The applicants maintained their claims. They submitted, in particular, that the respondent authority could have made use of the replacement of the defendant procedure instead of applying for the supervisory review of the judgments. In any event, the initial judgments had been issued in accordance with substantive and procedural law. As a result of the quashing, monthly payments due to them had been reduced by RUB 1,283.86 in case of Mr Pavlenko and RUB 1,925 in case of the remaining applicants.

1. Article 6 of the Convention

23. The Court reiterates that for the sake of legal certainty implicitly required by Article 6, final judgments should generally be left intact. Departures from that principle are justified only when made necessary by circumstances of a substantial and compelling character (see Kot v. Russia, No. 20887/03, § 24, 18 January 2007, and Protsenko v. Russia, No. 13151/04, §§ 25 - 34, 31 July 2008).
24. The Court observes that in the present cases the final and binding judgments were set aside since the Presidium disagreed with the lower court's interpretation of the provisions of the Chernobyl Law, namely with the way the court determined the defendant in the cases at hand. In the Court's view, the fact that the Presidium disagreed with the assessment made by the first-instance court was not, in itself, an exceptional circumstance warranting the quashing of the judgment (see Kot, cited above, § 29).
25. Turning to the Government's argument concerning the respondent authority's alleged lack of means to protect its rights, the Court observes that the purported defects in the present group of cases could have been cured in the appeal proceedings. A situation where the final judgments in the applicants' favour were called into question could have been avoided, had the respondent authority lodged an ordinary appeal within the statutory ten-day time-limit (see Borshchevskiy v. Russia, No. 14853/03, § 48, 21 September 2006, and Nelyubin v. Russia, No. 14502/04, § 27, 2 November 2006). The Government did not point to any exceptional circumstances that would have prevented the Ministry of Finance from making use of an ordinary appeal, and the Court does not detect a specific reason which would justify the departure from the principle of legal certainty in the present eight cases.
26. Accordingly, there has been a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention in the present eight cases.

2. Article 1 of Protocol No. 1

27. The Court reiterates that the existence of a debt confirmed by a binding and enforceable judgment constitutes the beneficiary's "possession" within the meaning of Article 1 of Protoc



> 1 2 3 4 5 ... 6

	Поделиться:	Tweet