Information Note on the Court’s case-law 18

May 2000

Thoma v. Luxembourg (dec.) - 38432/97

Decision 25.5.2000 [Section II]

Article 10

Article 10-1

Freedom of expression

Conviction of a journalist for quoting extracts from an article questioning the honesty of a group of civil servants: admissible

A German-language daily newspaper published an article by B. about reafforestation techniques used after storms had devastated part of the national woodlands. Among other things, the article suggested that all but one of the civil servants from the Water and Forestry Commission were corruptible. The applicant, who was a radio-show presenter and had previously denounced serious problems in the reafforestation sector, decided to quote in one of his shows extracts, in the Luxemburgish language, from B.’s article, which he described as “explosive”. Sixty-three civil servants from the authority concerned issued defamation pro ceedings against the applicant. They complained that in quoting the accusations made in the article he had passed them off as his own and had thus informed public opinion that all forest wardens and engineers were, with one exception, corruptible. The cour t delivered 63 judgments in which it awarded each of the plaintiffs one franc in nominal damages and ordered the applicant to pay costs and expenses. It found that the applicant had suggested without evidence and without qualifying his statements that all the plaintiffs were corruptible; he had thus gone beyond the bounds of his right to impart reliable information. The applicant appealed and sought joinder of the cases. The court of appeal made an order for joinder but upheld the judgments, finding that th e applicant had not distanced himself from the quoted passages and therefore could not seek to escape liability by alleging that he had merely quoted from B.’s article. His appeals to the Court of Cassation were dismissed. The applicant complains, inter al ia , that there has been a violation of his right to freedom of expression and contends that the Court of Cassation is not an impartial court as habitually two (three in the instant case) of its five judges are from the court of appeal and it is called upon to review and, if appropriate, overrule decisions delivered by judges with whom it works.

Admissible under Article 10.

Inadmissible under Article 6 § 1: With regard to the alleged impartiality of the Court of Cassation, the law on the organisation of the judiciary, drafted with the size of the country and the limited number of cassation cases in mind, contains provisions aimed at guaranteeing the objective impartiality of the judges in the Court of Cassation. Furthermore, the fact that those judges are req uired to review judgments given by other judges with whom they work regularly or occasionally or that they may have known about a case before it was referred to them, since the Court of Appeal and the Court of Cassation are grouped together in the same bod y, cannot justify fears as to the court’s impartiality: manifestly ill-founded.

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

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