I. Alleged violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention
25. The applicant complained that the length of the proceedings had been incompatible with the "reasonable time" requirement, laid down in Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, which reads as follows:
"In the determination of his civil rights and obligations..., everyone is entitled to a... hearing within a reasonable time by [a]... tribunal..."
26. The Government contested that argument.
A. Admissibility
27. The Government submitted that the applicant failed to exhaust the following domestic remedies which had been available to her in respect of the excessive length of court proceedings: (1) a complaint to the Judges' Qualification Board of the Rostov Regional Court; (2) an appeal against the District Court's decisions to adjourn hearings and the decisions to carry out the expert examinations, which could have been lodged in accordance with the Code of Civil Procedure; (3) an application to the judge to replace the experts, if she had considered the expert examinations to have taken an unreasonably long time; and (4) a complaint to the competent court that the judgment had not been executed.
28. The Court notes that the Government did not indicate whether and, if so, how the applicant could have obtained relief - either preventive or compensatory - by having recourse to the first three suggested remedies. In particular, the Government failed to spell out how a complaint to the Rostov Regional Qualification of Judges Board could have expedited the impugned proceedings (see Kormacheva v. Russia, No. 53084/99, §§ 61 - 64, 29 January 2004, and Mikhaylovich v. Russia, No. 30019/05, § 21, 12 February 2009). The Government also failed to refer to provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure which would have allowed the applicant to appeal against the adjournment of the hearings. Furthermore, the Government failed to explain why, in order to ensure the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time, the applicant should have appealed against the court's decisions to carry out the expert examinations requested by all the plaintiffs, including herself (see §§ 7 and 21 above) and how replacing the experts could have accelerated the completion of the examinations. As to the fourth and last avenue of redress suggested by the Government, it should be noted that any issue of the non-enforcement of a final judgment is beyond the scope of the present case. The Court therefore dismisses the Government's non-exhaustion plea.
29. It further notes that the application is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention and is not inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible.
B. Merits
30. The period to be taken into consideration began on 31 July 1998 when the applicant lodged her action with the Kuybyshevskiy District Court and ended on 8 February 2006 with the final judgment of the Rostov Regional Court. It thus lasted approximately seven years and seven months at two levels of jurisdiction.
31. The Court reiterates that the reasonableness of the length of proceedings must be assessed in the light of the circumstances of the case and with reference to the following criteria: the complexity of the case, the conduct of the applicant and the relevant authorities and what was at stake for the applicant in the dispute (see, among many other authorities, Frydlender v. France [GC], No. 30979/96, § 43, ECHR 2000-VII).
32. It is noted that in the present case the Government argued that the domestic courts examined the applicant's claim within a reasonable time. They relied on three groups of arguments, which will be examined below.
1. Complexity of the case
33. First of all, the Government indicated t
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