Communicated on 3 December 2014

SECOND SECTION

Application no. 48590/11 László SZILÁGYI against Hungary lodged on 1 August 2011

STATEMENT OF FACTS

The applicant, Mr László Szilágyi , is a Hungarian national, who was born in 1959 and lives in Székesfehérvár . He is represented before the Court by Mr A. Litresits , a lawyer practising in Budapest .

The circumstances of the case

The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.

In a real estate dispute, in 2008 the Székesfehérvár Municipality filed an action against the applicant, requesting the Székesfehérvár District Court to order him to pay a large sum of money.

The District Court found for the plaintiff.

On appeal, on 12 November 2009 the Fejér County Regional Court upheld the first-instance decision. The president of the panel in charge did not declare during the proceedings that one of his sons was a member of the plaintiff municipality ’ s general assembly and a member of two municipal committees and his other son was a member of the board of Sz . Rt . (a company that had joined the proceedings on the plaintiff ’ s side on 11 December 2008).

The applicant ’ s complaints about the perceived incompatibility to the President of the Fejér County Regional Court and to the President of the National Judicial Council were to no avail.

Upon the applicant ’ s petition for review (a remedy going to points of law), on 28 October 2010 the Supreme Court upheld the Regional Court ’ s judgment. It was satisfied that the parental link between the second-instance president and the officials of the plaintiff ’ s side did not as such deprive the appeal bench of its impartiality. This decision was served on the applicant on 4 February 2011.

COMPLAINT

The applicant complains under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention that the hearing was not fair in that the close parental relationship between the president of the second-instance bench and two individuals with links to the opposing party amounted to a breach of the requirement of objective impartiality.

QUESTION TO THE PARTIES

Was the second-instance tribunal which dealt with the applicant ’ s case objectively impartial, as required by Article 6 § 1 of the Convention , given the parental relationship between the president of the bench and two officials with links to the plaintiff ?