Destruction of a house from daily explosions in a neighboring mine
JUDGMENT
Dimitar Yordanov v. Bulgaria 06.09.2018 (no. 3401/09)
SUMMARY
Installation and operation of a state coal mine near the applicant’s home. Explosions near the house in violation of national. Cracks and the inappropriateness of the house from the operation of the mine that forced the owner to abandon it. Action against the mine for compensation. The national courts have recognized the illegal operation of the mine but have not found a causal link between the damage to the applicant’s home and the irregularities. Infringement of the applicant’s right to peaceful enjoyment of his property.
PROPERTY
Article 1 of the Additional Protocol
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicant, Dimitar Pavlov Yordanov, is a Bulgarian national who was born in 1939 and lives in
Sofia. The case concerned his complaint about damage to his property caused by a nearby coalmine.
Mr Yordanov owned a plot of land in the village of Golyamo Buchino. At the end of the 1980s or the
beginning of the 1990s, the State decided to create an opencast coalmine near to the village. A
number of properties, including Mr Yordanov’s, were expropriated. He waited for two years without
receiving another plot of land in compensation, promised to him in the expropriation procedure. He
therefore cancelled the procedure with the local authorities. He remained in the house, while the
mine started operating and gradually expanded.
At its closest, the mine operated within 160-180 metres from his house, with coal being extracted by
blasting. Cracks appeared on the walls of the house and his barn and animal pen collapsed. He
eventually moved out of his house in 1997, judging it too dangerous to stay. The house has since
fallen down and the property remains abandoned.
In 2001 Mr Yordanov brought a tort action against the mining company, seeking compensation for
the damage caused to his property. The courts heard witnesses, Mr Yordanov’s neighbours, and
commissioned expert reports, establishing that serious damage had been caused to his property and
that detonations in the nearby mine had been carried out inside the 500 metre buffer area, in
breach of domestic law. However, the courts concluded in 2007 that there was no proof of a link
between the mining activities and the damage, which could also have been caused by normal wear
and tear or shortcomings in the house’s construction.
Relying in particular on Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair hearing) of the European Convention on Human
Rights and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (protection of property) to the Convention, Mr Yordanov
alleged that the courts had wrongly dismissed his tort claim and that the State had failed to protect
his property from unlawful mining activities.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
The Government had not shown that the authorities had intended to honour their legal obligations under the expropriation procedure. The applicant could therefore not be blamed for the expropriation procedure’s failure. The mine had been managed by a company that was entirely State-owned. The company had not been not engaged in ordinary commercial business, but instead in a heavily regulated field subject to environmental and health-and-safety requirements. It was significant that the decision to create the mine had been taken by the State, which had also expropriated numerous privately owned properties in the area to allow for its functioning.
The company was thus the means of conducting a State activity. The authorities, through the failed expropriation of the applicant’s property and the work of the mine under what was effectively State control, had been responsible for the applicant’s property remaining in the area of environmental hazard, namely the daily detonations in close proximity to the applicant’s home. That situation, which had led the applicant to abandon his property, amounted to State interference with the peaceful enjoyment of his “possessions”. The detonations within the sanitation zone had been in manifest breach of domestic law. The interference with the peaceful enjoyment of the applicant’s possessions had thus not been lawful for the purposes of the analysis under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.
No violation of Article 6 § 1
Violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1(echrcaselaw.com editing).
