PARTLY DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE MIFSUD BONNICI

1. I form part of the majority on all the operative parts of the judgment except for points 3 and 5 where the majority found that there had been no violation of Article 6 § 1 with regard to cases nos. 5220/1989, 11301/1990 and 6137/1991 and, accordingly, I think that compensation is due for these last-mentioned three cases.

2. These cases lasted seven years and eight months, six years and four months and five years and eight months respectively.

3. These three cases lasted for such an unreasonable length of time because in all of them the court awaited the decision which was to be given in case no. 10429/1986. Because of this factor the majority took the view that there had been no breach of the guarantee of a hearing within a reasonable time in Article 6 § 1.

4. It is on this point that I dissent. In my view the applicants in the three above-mentioned cases had a right to expect that their cases would be heard within a reasonable time, irrespective of whether, in the opinion of the judges hearing the cases, it was expedient to await the outcome of case no. 10429/1986. That case was not heard within a reasonable time. The applicants in that case therefore suffered a breach of the basic right guaranteed by Article 6 § 1 and I cannot agree that the applicants in the three subsequent cases did not suffer the same kind of breach, just because their cases were made to depend on the first one. Surely it follows – logically and juridically – that the breach of the reasonable time requirement in the first case cannot be said to have purged the unreasonable delay in the three cases which followed it simply because it was juridically convenient to tie them up with the previous case which was already unreasonably long.

5. The judgment on this point appears (at least) to imply that the length of the proceedings in the first case serves as a justification for the length of proceedings in subsequent cases. The violation suffered by the applicants in these three cases cannot be so justified and these applicants should have been granted a remedy for the breach they suffered even though it was due to the breach suffered by others before them.

[1] . This summary by the registry does not bind the Court.

[2] Notes by the Registrar

. The case is numbered 163/1996/782/983. The first number is the case’s position on the list of cases referred to the Court in the relevant year (second number). The last two numbers indicate the case’s position on the list of cases referred to the Court since its creation and on the list of the corresponding originating applications to the Commission.

[3] . Rules of Court A apply to all cases referred to the Court before the entry into force of Protocol No. 9 (1 October 1994) and thereafter only to cases concerning States not bound by that Protocol. They correspond to the Rules that came into force on 1 January 1983, as amended several times subsequently.

[4] . Note by the Registrar : for practical reasons, this annex will appear only with the printed version of the judgment (in Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998), but a copy of the Commission’s report is available from the registry.