CEDH · CASELAW;DECISIONS;ADMISSIBILITYCOM;ENG — 17 octobre 2024

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .sFE10DC93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s2EF17D91 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center; font-size:2pt } .s5E1364CA { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:14pt } .s339D85E6 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:14pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .s5FFF0A77 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:1pt } .s10950C61 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-indent:14.2pt; text-align:justify } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .sB9D5CABB { width:28.35pt; display:inline-block } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .s3AAE10DF { margin-top:14pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:justify; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:14pt } .s3CA22BA { font-family:Arial; text-transform:uppercase } .s9F46BEC9 { margin-top:14pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:justify; font-size:14pt } .s6B505E72 { margin:0pt; padding-left:0pt } .s6C5BED22 { margin-left:25.5pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:justify; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s5E8F5A28 { margin-top:14pt; margin-left:25.5pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:justify; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s2D9C6089 { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-indent:14.2pt; text-align:justify; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .s84651E4E { margin-top:14pt; margin-left:14.2pt; margin-bottom:3pt; text-align:justify } .s69DCC830 { margin-top:36pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .sC986E16F { font-family:Arial; color:#ffffff } .sBD1BE8CC { width:33.89pt; display:inline-block } .s25198F8F { width:149.77pt; display:inline-block } .s5D826FD4 { width:25.88pt; display:inline-block } .s1B61D60 { width:156.43pt; display:inline-block } .sA1D3DA2E { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:justify }     FIFTH SECTION DECISION Application no. 51653/15 Vitaliy Vitaliyovych DOMINNIK against Ukraine   The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting on 17   October 2024 as a Committee composed of:   María Elósegui , President ,   Kateřina Šimáčková,   Stéphane Pisani , judges , and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar , Having regard to: the application (no.   51653/15) against Ukraine lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 10 October 2015 by a Ukrainian national, Mr Vitaliy Vitaliyovych Dominnik (“the applicant”), who was born in 1970 and lives in the village of Kadyivka, in the Khmelnytskyi Region; the decision to give notice of the complaints under Article 6 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention to the Ukrainian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Ms   M. Sokorenko, and to declare the remainder of the application inadmissible; the parties’ observations; Having deliberated, decides as follows: SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE 1.     The application concerns the applicant’s complaint under Article 6 §   1 of the Convention that the courts failed to apply the limitation period in his case, and his complaint that he had been deprived of his property in violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. 2.     In 1992 the applicant inherited a house from D. It appears that he also continued to use two plots of land (one on which the house stood, and the other for gardening) with a total surface area of 0.68 ha, being land that had been in D.’s use (“the land”). On 24 January 1997 the Kadyivka Village Council (“the Village Council”) decided to “transfer [the land] into private property having been in [the applicant’s] use since 1992, in order to formalise [his] ownership”. This decision was a first step in a procedure to obtain ownership of land; that procedure also included the preparation of technical documentation for the land, its delimitation on site and issuance of the ownership documents. 3 .     Since at least 2009 the applicant has been involved in a dispute with his neighbour S., who in 2003 had inherited a house on the adjacent plot of land. The dispute centred on the delimitation of their respective plots of land. Numerous sets of proceedings were initiated by either the applicant or S. 4.     In April 2013 the applicant prepared technical documentation in order to formalise his title to the land. On the basis of that technical documentation and the 1997 Village Council decision, in May 2013 the applicant obtained ownership documents in relation to the land issued by the local authorities. 5.     In December 2013 S. lodged a civil action with the Yarmolyntsi Local Court of the Khmelnytskyi Region (“the local court”) against the Village Council and the applicant, seeking the invalidation of the 1997 Village Council decision and of the applicant’s ownership documents that had been obtained in May 2013. S. argued that as the boundaries between their plots of land had not been determined, the applicant could not have provided the Village Council with the correct and appropriate technical documentation and that his rights as a user of the adjacent land had thus been violated. 6.     The applicant argued that S. had no formalised right to his plot of land, only to the house, so could not claim any rights. The applicant also requested that S.’s action be rejected as submitted outside the three-year statutory limitation period, arguing that S. would have been aware of the 1997 Village Council decision well before 2010 (or 2013). It is unclear what documents the applicant submitted to the local court in support of that statement. 7 .     On 29 April 2014 the local court granted S.’s claims. It established that at the time of the adoption of the 1997 Village Council decision on the transfer of land to the applicant, no documents required for such transfer under the law – in particular, initial technical documents establishing the size and boundaries of the plot of land – had been submitted. The court further noted that the manner in which the applicant’s ownership had been formalised in 2013 had violated the rights of S. as the owner of the house and of other constructions on the adjacent plot of land, as the boundaries of the applicant’s plot of land, as established in the technical documentation, in fact crossed through S.’s shed. In that connection the court referred, inter alia , to the statements of the Village Council’s representative, made in the proceedings, essentially acknowledging that no proper technical documentation had been submitted for the formalisation of the applicant’s title in 2013. Lastly, the court dismissed the applicant’s argument regarding the limitation period, noting that “according to S.’s explanation, he had found out about the 1997 Village Council decision only in 2013” and that the documents provided by the applicant as proof that S. had known about the decision a long time beforehand “did not contain any information about the matter to be proven, and are therefore inadmissible evidence”. 8.     On 19 February 2015 the Khmelnytskyi Region Court of Appeal quashed the part of the local court’s judgment relating to the invalidation of the applicant’s title documents, as the State Registration Service had not been involved in the proceedings, and upheld the remainder of the judgment. The appellate court mentioned that the applicant had raised the issue regarding the application of the limitation period in his appeal, but it did not comment on that matter. 9.     On 30 April 2015 the Higher Specialised Court for Civil and Criminal Cases upheld the judgment of the appellate court. 10.     In further proceedings initiated by S. against the State Registration Service the courts invalidated the applicant’s title documents, referring to the above-mentioned proceedings. The final judgment was adopted by the Supreme Court on 8 May 2019. The land in question was returned to the ownership of the village.   THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT Alleged violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention 11.     The applicant complained under Article 6 that the courts had failed to apply the three-year limitation period to the claims brought by S., who must have known of the 1997 Village Council decision and the violation of his rights long before 2013, when he had lodged his action to have the applicant’s title invalidated. The Government submitted that the present complaint was ill-founded. 12.     The Court notes that the applicant consistently raised in the domestic courts the argument concerning the expiry of the limitation period. The local court dismissed it, having found, without, however, providing details, that S. had learnt of the 1997 decision of the Village Council only in 2013 and that the applicant had not provided any proof to substantiate his arguments (see paragraph 7 above). The appellate court provided no analysis of its own but upheld the local court’s judgment, as did the Court of Cassation. 13.     The Court reiterates that it is not its task to take the place of the domestic courts and that it is primarily for the national authorities, notably the courts, to resolve problems of interpretation of domestic legislation. The Court is not a court of appeal from the national courts and it is not its function to deal with errors of fact or law allegedly committed by a national court unless and in so far as they may have infringed rights and freedoms protected by the Convention (see Ramos Nunes de Carvalho e Sá v.   Portugal [GC], nos.   55391/13 and 2 others, § 186, 6 November 2018, with further references). 14.     In the present case, the Court finds no indication that the applicant, who was represented by his lawyer throughout the proceedings, could not sufficiently put forward his point of view, that the various legal arguments presented by him were not duly examined by the domestic courts, that the other party was put in a better position or that the proceedings were otherwise unfairly conducted. Furthermore, in view of the above and without speculating on the dates, the Court does not consider unreasonable the domestic courts’ finding that it was in 2013 that S. had found out about the violation of his rights, including by the impugned 1997 decision of the Village Council, since it was only in May 2013 that the applicant obtained official ownership documents in relation to the land. 15.     The Court therefore does not find that the applicant was deprived of a fair trial in the meaning of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. It considers therefore that this complaint is manifestly ill‑founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article   35 §§   3   (a)   and   4 of the Convention. Alleged violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention 16.     The applicant further complained that he had been deprived of property of which he was the rightful owner. The Government argued that the applicant had failed to exhaust domestic remedies, as he had not filed any claims for compensation in relation to the actions of the domestic authorities. They also noted that as the land which had previously been registered in the applicant’s name currently belonged to the local authorities, it was open to him to privatise it in accordance with the land legislation. 17.     The Court does not find it necessary to rule on the admissibility issue raised by the Government, as the applicant’s complaint is in any case manifestly ill-founded for the reasons stated below. 18.     The Court notes at the outset that the civil proceedings resulting in the invalidation of the applicant’s title were instituted by S., who sought to protect his own rights as a user of the adjacent plot of land and the owner of the house built on it. While the Village Council was one of the defendants in the proceedings and had, as a result, become once again the owner of the disputed plot of land, the Court nevertheless considers that the sole purpose of those proceedings was to protect the interests of S. 19.     Regard being had to the above, the Court concludes that the present case concerns, in substance, a dispute between private parties. It reiterates, in this connection, that such disputes do not as such engage the responsibility of the State under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention (see, among other authorities, Zagrebačka banka d.d. v. Croatia , no. 39544/05, § 250, 12   December 2013, and Kochergin v. Russia [Committee], no. 71462/17, §§   29-30, 24 September 2019). The Court’s task is thus to assess whether the domestic courts’ adjudication of the dispute between S. and the applicant was in accordance with domestic law and to ascertain that the decisions they gave in that regard were not arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable. Its jurisdiction to verify that domestic law has been correctly interpreted and applied is limited and it is not its function to take the place of the national courts (see Kochergin , cited above, §§ 31-32, with further references). 20.     The Court notes that there existed a long-standing dispute between the applicant and S. regarding the delimitation of their adjacent plots of land. Without such delimitation, neither of the parties could proceed with the drawing-up of technical documentation and its approval by the Village Council, which was a precondition for the registration of ownership rights and issuance of title documents. Despite that, in April/May 2013 the applicant was somehow able to finalise the technical documentation and obtain ownership documents, which, as is apparent from the domestic courts’ findings, mentioned boundaries of the land that not only encroached on S.’s land, but also passed through some constructions on that land. The Court has no elements in the documents before it to question that conclusion. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether the 1997 Village Council decision, even if adopted with some irregularities at that time, had, as such, anything to do with that situation or, indeed, could be regarded as interfering with the rights of S. – who had not inherited his house until much later, in 2003 – and thus as needing to be set aside. At the same time, the Court does not discern any manifest unreasonableness in the domestic courts’ overall conclusions that the manner in which the applicant’s title was eventually formalised interfered with the rights of S. and did not have due regard to the applicable procedures, and that the only way to remedy that situation was to invalidate both the applicant’s ownership documents and the 1997 decision as their initial basis. 21.     In this connection the Court takes account of the information provided by the Government that the land previously registered in the applicant’s name is currently considered municipal land and there is nothing to preclude its re ‑ allocation to the applicant provided that the applicable rules and procedures have been duly complied with. The applicant has not argued that this was impossible or too burdensome for any reason. 22.     It follows that this applicant’s complaint is manifestly ill‑founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article   35 §§   3   (a)   and   4 of the Convention. For these reasons, the Court, unanimously, Declares the application inadmissible. Done in English and notified in writing on 14 November 2024.     Martina Keller   María Elósegui   Deputy Registrar   President