Admissibility: time frame for submission of appeal and new claims

Facts

The author of the complaint was the head of a local administration of a town in the Russian Federation and he also served as an assistant to a deputy of the State of Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. The author claims in the complaint that the Council of Deputies of his town was trying to defame him and remove him from office by damaging his reputation. The author claims that in 2011, a free to air television channel- NTV, broadcasted a news report, which was later uploaded to a public domain on the internet, by falsely accusing him of illegally selling a sewage truck of the municipality, which is a criminal offence, and also convicted him of unlawful deprivation of liberty of deputies from the local Council of Deputies. The author claims that it was another individual who illegally sold the truck, and the said person was convicted by a court judgement.

The author lodged a civil lawsuit in a District Court against NTV and the author of the news report claiming reimbursement of damages and compensation for moral harm and also sought the retraction of the news report. The District Court rejected the author’s claim on the basis that it was unfounded and held that the news report could not be considered as defamatory as it did not focus on a particular individual and was just an expression of opinion by the journalist. The author appealed against the decision of the District Court claiming violation of fair trial rights on the grounds that the decision had been rendered in his absence and that he was not notified about the time and place of the hearing.

The Moscow City Court rejected the appeal and upheld the judgement of the District Court and emphasized on ensuring a balance between private interests and freedom of the media. The author lodged a cassation appeal which was also dismissed by a judge of the Moscow City Court. The author claims that though he had a possibility of lodging a further appeal in cassation before the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, he was unable to do so because of a six-month time limit for lodging a cassation appeal, which had expired, and a further application for a reset would delay the process of the case by several years. Accordingly, the author in the communication claims a violation of articles 14 (1) and (6), 16 and 17 for serious damage to his honor and reputation as well as the right to protection by the law against such damage.

Admissibility

Contrary to the arguments of the author, the Committee stated that there was no basis for the author to claim that an application for the reset of the procedural time for filing a cassation appeal would have delayed the legal process by several years and that the author did not have the time to lodge the appeal due to receipt of the decision of the Moscow City Court on the last day of the six-month time period for submission of the appeal. The Committee noted that the time spent by the court in considering the cassation appeal was not to be considered when calculating the six-month period and that the six-month time period began from the day following the adoption of the appeal and hence, the author’s claims were unfounded and was not based on concrete evidence and facts. The Committee emphasized on the requirement for authors to avail themselves of all domestic remedies in order to fulfil the criteria under article 5 (2) (b) of the Optional Protocol, and recognized that the author in the present case failed to show adequately that he did not have access to an effective remedy through a cassation appeal before the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, and hence considered the author’s claims under article 14 (1) and 17 as inadmissible.

Furthermore, the Committee was unwilling to accept new claims made by the author under article 14 (2). Referring to its decision in D.C. v. Lithuania, the Committee in the present decision stated that the author did not substantiate why the new claim could not have been raised in his initial submission, and accordingly considered the new claim inadmissible due to violation of article 3 of the Optional Protocol. The Committee also considered the author’s claims under articles 14 (6) and 16 as not having been duly substantiated and hence inadmissible under article 2 of the Optional Protocol. Overall, the Committee considered the claims of the author in the present communication as inadmissible under articles 2, 3, and 5 (2) (b).