The requirement to attach judicial acts when filing a cassation appeal has been recognized as unconstitutional.
By the decision SDO-1293 of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Armenia dated July 12, 2016, the third point of the second part of Article 231 of the Civil Procedure Code of the Republic of Armenia was recognized as unconstitutional, which stipulated the following: In the case of submitting a cassation appeal, the person submitting the appeal must justify... if the interpretation of any norm in the contested judicial act contradicts the interpretation given to that norm in the decision of the European Court of Human Rights, by attaching those judicial acts and quoting the conflicting parts of them, performing a comparative analysis regarding the contradiction of the contested judicial act and the judicial act of the European Court of Human Rights in a case with certain factual circumstances.
The background of the case is as follows.
The cassation court had returned the cassation appeal of the company for correcting the errors of the decision and set a fifteen-day deadline for resubmitting the cassation appeal. The cassation appeal was resubmitted by the company to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Armenia, based on which the cassation court made a decision "On leaving the cassation appeal without examination," reasoning that: "... The previously submitted cassation appeal on behalf of the company was returned by the decision of the Civil and Administrative Chamber of the cassation court dated 03.06.2015 also on the grounds that the person submitting the appeal cited a number of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in the cassation appeal, but did not attach those judicial acts to the appeal, therefore the cassation appeal should be left without examination.
The applicant company cited facts of limitation of the accessibility of the court and the effectiveness of judicial protection.
The respondent, almost as always, found no issues regarding the limitation of rights, stating that everything is legal and constitutional.
However, the Constitutional Court justifiably granted the company's application, recognizing the requirement to attach the judicial acts cited in the appeal as unconstitutional, among other reasons, justifying it with the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (Case of Khalfaoui v. France, application no. 34791/97, 14/03/2000), which states that the state may set certain conditions for exercising the right to access the court, "... simply the restrictions imposed by the state should not limit the person's right to access the court in such a way or to such an extent that it harms the very essence of that right. Moreover, the restriction does not comply with the first part of Article 6 if it does not pursue a legitimate aim, and if there is no reasonable relationship of proportionality between the means employed and the aim pursued.
The Constitutional Court also noted that the requirement to attach the judicial acts cited in the appeal within the framework of the legal norm in dispute unjustifiably burdens the appellant. Furthermore, such a requirement not only inadequately restricts the realization of the rights to access the court and effective judicial protection but also constitutes an obstacle to the effective and complete realization of the constitutional and legal function of ensuring uniform application of the law by the cassation court, preventing the cassation court from accepting the cassation appeal for consideration and administering justice in cases where there are other grounds established by law for satisfying the cassation appeal.
This is a unique message to the cassation court that if the grounds cited by the applicant regarding the contradiction to a specific judicial act are assessed as insufficient for accepting the appeal for consideration, but at the same time there are sufficient other grounds in the presented cassation appeal for accepting the appeal for consideration, then it should be accepted for consideration.
Ultimately, these judicial acts are accessible to the cassation court, and it is the positive obligation of the state to ensure the accessibility of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, while the requirement to provide a translation of the decisions of the ECHR into Armenian imposes additional obligations on the party, requiring mainly financial resources exceeding the minimum wage for that translation, even when it is not clear whether the appeal will be accepted for consideration or not and the enormous time required to present the translated acts, as well as the quality of translations we have...
Therefore, the third point of the second part of Article 231 of the Civil Procedure Code of the Republic of Armenia regarding the requirement to attach the judicial acts cited from the European Court of Human Rights to the cassation appeal has been recognized as contrary to the requirements of the first parts of Articles 61 and 63, and Article 78 of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia and invalid.