Conflicting case-law of the Supreme Court of Cassation. Legal security and the decision of the Court
JUDGMENT
Mariyka Popova and Asen Popov v. Bulgaria 11.04.2019 (no. 11260/10)
SUMMARY
Conflicting case law in the interpretation of a provision made by different compositions of the Supreme Court. Rejection of the applicants’ appeal by the Supreme Court of Cassation due to discrepancies in the case law of that court regarding the liability of the insurance company for road accidents. Strasbourg considered that there were “profound and long-lasting differences” in the interpretation of Article 407 (1) of the Bulgarian Commercial Law by the Bulgarian Supreme Court, which affected this particular case. However, the national legislation included a mechanism capable of remedying those disputes, which came into force shortly after the decisions were taken in the applicants’ case and within a reasonable time. No violation of Article 6 § 1 of the ECHR.
PROVISION
Article 6 § 1
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicants, Mariyka Todorova Popova and Asen Asparuhov Popov, Bulgarian nationals, are a
married couple who were born in 1941 and 1936 respectively and live in Dorkovo.
In May 2004 the applicants’ daughter died in a road-traffic accident. Criminal proceedings were
brought against S.V., the driver who had caused the accident. Mr Popov and Ms Popova, the
deceased woman’s son and husband and the other victim of the accident joined the proceedings as
civil parties. The court found S.V. guilty of having negligently caused the applicants’ daughter’s death
and inflicted injuries on the other victim. It ordered S.V. to pay damages.
The applicants and the three other civil parties were unable to recover the sums owed to them
because S.V. was declared insolvent. Acting separately, they brought an action against S.V.’s
insurance company. In several judgments, the first-instance and appeal courts ruled that the
claimants were entitled to sue the insurer of the person who had caused the accident, even though
the latter had already been ordered to pay damages, given that they had been unable to recover the
sums awarded.
Furthermore, in a judgment of 21 February 2008, the Sofia City Court found in the applicants’ favour
and ordered the insurance company to pay them compensation. The Sofia Court of Appeal set aside
that judgment, finding that the applicants were not entitled to sue the insurance company, given
that they had already obtained a court order against the insured person for the same amounts and
in respect of the same event, namely their daughter’s death. Mr and Ms Popovi lodged an appeal on
points of law. They argued that there was a contradiction between the appeal court’s conclusion on
the applicability of section 407(1) of the Trade Act to their case, and the conclusion reached by the Supreme Court of Cassation in similar cases. The Supreme Court of Cassation dismissed their appeal on points of law as inadmissible.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
Article 6 § 1
The Court noted that, in the applicants’ case, the bench of the Supreme Court of Cassation had
interpreted the domestic legislation in such a way that the applicants had been deprived of the
possibility of establishing the liability of the offender’s insurance company. However, other benches
of the same court had taken precisely the opposite position after examining the actions brought by
the three other civil parties.
It was clear from a review of the domestic case-law in this area that there existed two diverging
approaches to the interpretation of section 407(1) of the Trade Act, which regulated the
arrangements for bringing an action for damages against and insurer. The two alternative
approaches had had significant repercussions for the right to fair proceedings, both for the victims of
road-traffic accidents and for insurance companies. This question, on the admissibility of such
litigation, was decisive for the outcome of this kind of dispute and could potentially have affected a
large number of cases. Thus, the Court noted that the first diverging decision dated from 2006, that
an increased number of contradictory decisions were delivered in 2009, and that this situation
persisted until 2010. The Court considered that this lapse of time, which did not strike it as
excessive, had to be assessed in the light of the circumstances of the case. In particular, the Court
took into consideration the potentially high number of cases relating to road-traffic accidents.
The Court then noted that the domestic legislation contained a mechanism capable of providing
redress for this situation, namely the procedure provided for in Article 292 of the new Code of Civil
Procedure, under which one of the judicial benches at the Supreme Court of Cassation could ask the
same court to provide guidance on the interpretation of the relevant provisions of domestic law. On
17 March 2010, while examining a similar case, one of the benches of the Supreme Court of
Cassation had noted the existence of these case-law divergences with regard to the interpretation of
section 407(1) of the Trade Act and had submitted a request for an interpretative judgment to the
commercial division of the Supreme Court of Cassation. That mechanism had been set in motion shortly after the adoption of the Supreme Court’s decision in the applicants’ case. The relevant
period coincided with the entry into force of the new Code of Criminal Procedure, which had
introduced new rules on the admissibility and examination of appeals on points of law. The Supreme
Court of Cassation had had to adapt its functioning to this new procedural legislation. On 6 June
2012 the Supreme Court of Cassation delivered its interpretative judgment on the question put to it,
which had resulted in harmonisation of its case-law.
The Court did not overlook the fact that the interpretation adopted by the Supreme Court of
Cassation would have been favourable to the applicants had their appeal on points of law been
examined after 2010. Nonetheless, the Court reiterated that the requirements of legal certainty and
the protection of the legitimate confidence of the public did not confer an acquired right to
consistency of case-law.
The Court concluded that the principle of legal certainty had not been infringed in the present case
and that, in consequence, there had been no violation of Article 6 § 1(echrcaselaw.com editing).
