Published on 28 August 2023

FIFTH SECTION

Application no. 41443/16 Oksana Bogdanivna OBARANCHUK against Ukraine lodged on 11 July 2016 communicated on 10 July 2023

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The application concerns the allegedly unlawful and unjustified quashing of the judgment of the Ternopil Town Court of 27 April 2012 acknowledging the applicant’s title to a land plot in the proceedings in which she challenged a public notary’s refusal to issue her an inheritance certificate regarding that land. The court found that the land had belonged to her father who had died in December 2007.

In particular, on 23 June 2015 the Ternopil Regional Court of Appeal allowed an appeal against that judgment lodged on an unspecified date in 2015 by an individual, L., who had not been a party to the first-instance proceedings and who had acquired the land in question in December 2013. The appellate court held that the applicant’s late father had not acquired the title since he had not completed the privatisation of the land which he had started in February 2007. Consequently, the land had been privatised in June 2013 by another person who had sold it to L. in December 2013. According to the appellate court, L. was entitled to appeal against the judgment of 27 April 2012 pursuant to Article 292 of the Civil Procedure Code of 2014, as worded at the material time, providing that appeals against first-instance judgments could be lodged by persons who did not participate in the proceedings but whose rights and obligations were “determined” by those judgments. By the decision of 20 January 2016, of which the applicant was informed on 4 March 2016, the Higher Specialised Court on Civil and Criminal Matters upheld the appellate court’s decision of 23 June 2015.

The applicant alleges that the quashing of the judgment of the Ternopil Town Court of 27 April 2012 was contrary to the principle of legal certainty and entailed a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Was there a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention on account of the quashing of the judgment of the Ternopil Town Court of 27 April 2012 (see Ponomaryov v. Ukraine , no. 3236/03, §§ 41-42, 3 April 2008, and Diya 97 v. Ukraine , no. 19164/04, §§ 46-52, 21 October 2010)?

2. Was there an interference with the peaceful enjoyment of the applicant’s possessions, within the meaning of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, on account of the quashing of the judgment of the Ternopil Town Court of 27 April 2012? If so, was that interference in compliance with the requirements of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (see Ukraine-Tyumen v. Ukraine , no. 22603/02, §§ 47-61, 22 November 2007, and Ponomaryov , cited above, §§ 46-47)?