Quick orient — first passages from judgment

The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:

David Thór Björgvinsson, President, Neboj&scaron;a Vučinić, Vincent A. De Gaetano, judges, and Fatoş Aracı , Deputy Section Registrar ,

The case originated in an application (no. 45213/07) against the Republic of Poland lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by a Polish national, Mr Franciszek Chorobik (“the applicant”), on 8 October 2007.

The Polish Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Mr J. Wołąsiewicz of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

By a judgment of 8 August 2006 the Kraków Regional Administrative Court dismissed the applicant’s appeal against a second-instance administrative decision of 25 August 2005 by which the second-instance authority had refused to acknowledge that the applicant’s ailment was of an occupational character.

Auto-extracted from BAILII. Full structured brief in progress — the source links below give you the verbatim judgment in the meantime.

This judgment was served on the applicant on 25 September 2006.

By a decision of 19 October 2006 the court granted legal aid to the applicant.

The local Bar Association assigned a lawyer to the case by a decision of 2 November 2006. This decision was served on the lawyer on 8 November 2006. On 13 November 2006 the applicant gave a power of attorney to the lawyer.

On 1 December 2006 the lawyer submitted a cassation appeal to the Regional Administrative Court.

On 29 December 2006 that court held that the time-limit for lodging a cassation appeal had expired on 25 October 2006, thirty days after the applicant had been served with the judgment. The court rejected the cassation appeal on the ground that under the applicable laws the fact that the party was not represented by a lawyer and requested for legal aid only after having been served with the judgment had no bearing on the running of the time-limit for submitting a cassation appeal. It also noted that the legal-aid lawyer had failed to submit a request for leave to appeal out of time together with the cassation appeal.

The applicant’s lawyer appealed. He acknowledged that he had not submitted the request for leave to appeal out of time. However, he was of the view that this omission would not be relevant for the court’s decision to accept the cassation appeal for examination.

On 13 April 2007 the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the contested decision and shared the legal view expressed by the first-instance court.

II. RELEVANT DOMESTIC LAW AND PRACTICE

The relevant domestic law and practice concerning the procedure for lodging cassation appeals with the Supreme Administrative Court against judgments of the Regional Administrative Courts are stated in the Court’s judgment in the case of Subicka v. Poland, no. 29342/06, §§ 12 21, 14 September 2010.

In particular, in its decision no. II FZ 651/07 of 18 January 2008 the Supreme Administrative Court held that a request for leave to appeal out of time was the only method by which a cassation appeal submitted after the expiry of the time-limit by a legally-aided applicant could be admitted for examination.

When legal aid has been granted and the time-limit for the submission of a cassation appeal has already expired, it is open to the legally-aided party to submit the appeal together with a request for leave to appeal out of time made under sections 86 and 87 of the Law on the Procedure before Administrative Courts (e.g. NSA FZ 754/04 of 31 January 2005 and NSA, I OZ 160/08 of 14 March 2008). In certain cases the courts stated that such a request should be submitted within seven days from the date on which the lawyer obtained a power of attorney from the party, which date is considered as the date on which the impediment to lodging an appeal ceased to exist (e.g. the Białystok Regional Administrative Court, II SAB Bk 27/07 of 10 April 2008), or from the date when the lawyer could obtain effective access to the case file (e.g. the Poznań Regional Administrative Court, IV SA/Po 865/06 of 13 November 2007).