Information Note on the Court’s case-law 206

April 2017

V.K. v. Russia - 9139/08

Judgment 4.4.2017 [Section III]

Article 5

Article 5-1

Procedure prescribed by law

Serious defect in legal representation in proceedings for compulsory admission to psychiatric hospital: violation

Facts – The applicant was compulsorily admitted to a psychiatric hospital following a hearing at which he was represented by a court-appoi nted lawyer. According to the court order, the lawyer stated that she considered “inpatient treatment to be reasonable”. In the Convention proceedings, the applicant complained under Article 5 § 1, inter alia , that the court-appointed lawyer had not follow ed his instructions, but had instead effectively consented to his admission to hospital against his will.

Law – Article 5 § 1: From the documents in the case file it appeared that the participation of the applicant’s court-appointed lawyer in the hearing w as limited to stating that the placement of the applicant in hospital was “reasonable”. The applicant, in respect of whom no legal guardian had been appointed, had presumably enjoyed full legal capacity at the hearing and so had been entitled to instruct h is lawyer to act in any lawful way he considered coherent with his interests. While the court-appointed lawyer might have concluded that it was in her client’s best interests to undergo treatment, any effort on her part to serve the interests of justice an d discharge the duty to the court should not have resulted in an unconditional endorsement of the hospital’s proposal without any reference to the applicant’s position. Her conduct could not, therefore, be reconciled with the requirements of effective repr esentation.

The domestic courts, as the ultimate guardians of fairness in the domestic proceedings, had done nothing to rectify that serious defect in the applicant’s legal representation. Indeed, the first-instance court had referred to the court-appoint ed lawyer’s consent as one of the factors for the applicant’s admission to hospital while the appellate court had not considered the applicant’s arguments on that issue sufficient for an annulment of the first-instance court’s decision.

Accordingly, in vie w of the flagrant defect in the applicant’s legal representation and the manifest failure of the domestic courts to consider that defect worthy of consideration, the proceedings leading to the applicant’s involuntary admission to hospital had not been fair and proper as required by Article 5 of the Convention.

Conclusion : violation (unanimously).

Article 41: EUR 1,500 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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