JOINT DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE S MYJER AND López Guerra

Unlike the majority we do not consider that there has been a violation of Article 6 in this case, and therefore not of Article 13 either.

We accept that the total period to be taken into account is five years, seven months and twenty days , as the Slovenian Government submit ted . During that time three levels of jurisdiction were involved.

It was the applicant himself who on 20 June 2003 lodged an appeal on points of law with the Supreme Court. The f act that the Supreme Court on 1 April 2004 rejected the appeal on the ground that the value of the claim fel l below the statutory threshold does not, in our opinion, justify the finding of the majority in paragraph 27 of the judg ment, namely that the time that elapsed in the proceedings before th e Supreme Court ought not to be taken into consideration as that appeal was rejected on procedural grounds and thus lacked any prospect of success. The underlying aim of the reas onable-time requirement is that parti es to proceedings should not be left in a state of u ncertainty about the outcome of t heir c ase for too long. If a party is dissatisfied with the judgments of the domestic court at first instance or at an intermediate level and burdens the higher national court with an appeal, that party should not in addition have the be nefit of reasoning by our Court baldly stating that it will not take into accoun t the last period and the extra level of jurisdiction involved. In the personal perception of the applicant he apparently had to wait for the final outcome of his case at national level from the day he started the civil proceedings until the day the decision of the Supreme Court was served on him. So it should come as no surprise to him that our Court should take that whole period into account when deciding whether or not the applicant was left in a state of uncertainty for too long.

The position may be different if, and only if, an applicant wishes to pursue further domestic remedies but has genuine reason to doubt their effectiveness. In such a case it is not unacceptable for the applicant – in order not to run the risk that his application will be rejected under the six - month rule or under the rule o n non-exhaustion of domestic remedies – to lodge an application before embarking on the further national remedy, as long as he inform s our Court accordingly. In this particular case the appeal was lodged on 20 June 2003 , whereas the application to the Court was brought four days later, on 24 June 2003.

We are fully aware that, according to our case-law, an app licant who brings an unnecessary or inappropriate appeal and then waits until the final decision before lodging an application with the Court faces the danger that his application will be declared inadmissible as out of time. But that is a different matter . In the case at hand the applicant brought an appeal at national level and at (almost) the same time he lodged an application with the Court. That made his case admissible as far as the six - month rule is concerned. On a substantive level, however, we cannot help feeling that the applicant wants to have it both ways: that is, proceedings before the Court running in parallel with the domestic proceedings. We consider that, in assessing the length of the proceedings for the purposes of Article 6 of the Conven tion, the total l e ngth of the proceedings at all domestic levels of jurisdiction should be taken into account in such a case .

As far as the reasonableness of the total length of proceedings is concerned, we are not convinced that in the particular circumstances of the case – even taking into account the interests at stake – a total period of five years, seven months and twenty days at three levels of jurisdiction is e xcessive. Moreover, it does not appear that it is only the respondent State which can be blamed for the time that elapsed . One may query whether the applicant, who , before the actual hearing could take place, filed preliminary submissions in which he modified his claim as regards interest, and on one occasion reduced his claim, had sufficiently prepared his case when he went to court in the first place.