On 7 November, the Constitutional Court made a final decision in the case “Based on the application of Ruben Grigoryan and Gohar Galstyan, regarding the case on determining the issue of compliance with the Constitution of Article 344 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Armenia”

Iravaban.net, highlighting the position expressed by the court in the case, presents it to the readers.

Background: How did all start?

The applicant Gohar Galstyan has been registered since 1964 and the applicant Ruben Grigoryan since 1986 and lived in one of the apartments located at 11 Pavstos Buzand Street, Yerevan. In February 1998, the Government passed a decision by which the applicants could register their ownership rights to the said immovable property.

Gohar Galstyan took advantage of the opportunity and on 25 May, 1998 applied to the State Committee for Real Estate Cadastre under the Government with a request to recognize the ownership right to the apartment, but did not receive an answer.

After about 4 years, by the decision of the Government, the said apartment appeared in the sale zone for the needs of the society and the state, by virtue of which the registration of the ownership rights of the applicants was limited, and according to another decision of the executive, their ownership rights to the apartment were not subject to legalization.

In 2004, Ruben Grigoryan again applied to the State Real Estate Cadastre Committee with a request to legalize the apartment, but on November 1, 2004, he was refused on the grounds that the voluntary structure is located in the sale zone taken for the needs of the state.

After that the applicants applied for judicial protection. A lawsuit about the inaction of the state body was filed against the Committee, the action to be recognized as an illegal and invalid act and the request to recognize the applicant’s ownership right to the apartment. In 2005, the court made a decision and rejected the submitted claim. The court referred to the decision of the Government, by which the apartment was included in the zone of sale of property for the needs of the society and the state. A few months after this decision, the applicants were evicted from their apartment.

At that time, the construction of the Northern Avenue had already started and was underway. The Government’s decision established the procedure for buying, taking, and pricing land plots and real estate located in the Northern Avenue zone, and another Government decision established a real estate (land, buildings and constructions) alienation zone for the needs of the state in Yerevan, which includes the above-mentioned apartment.

The applicants did not receive compensation from the state for the expropriated apartment on the grounds that the apartment was not legalized and the applicants did not have ownership rights to it.

On 15 October, 2019, Ruben Grigoryan and Gohar Galstyan submitted a claim to the Yerevan Court of First Instance against the Republic of Armenia on behalf of the Ministry of Finance regarding the request to provide preliminary and adequate compensation for the property expropriated for the needs of the state. However, the court granted the motion submitted by the representative of the Government to apply the statute of limitations, and on 3 March, 2022, it issued a verdict rejecting the claim of the applicants, on the basis of part 2 of Article 335 of the Civil Code, on the grounds that the statute of limitations has expired. The appeal was rejected on the same grounds, and the Court of Cassation even refused to take the appeal into proceedings.

Ruben Grigoryan and Gohar Galstyan, having these decisions of the three-level judicial system, appealed to the Constitutional Court, disputing Article 344 of the Civil Code, which defines the claims to which the statute of limitations does not apply.

According to the claim of the applicants, the application of the statute of limitations to the claim submitted by them led to the rejection of the substantive examination of their claim, the violation of the right of access to the court. “…The applicants consider that the purpose of the statute of limitations is legal certainty, predictability and security in a legal state, and in the case of a lasting and continuous violation, there can be no question of legal certainty, because in this case the priority is the person’s right to access the court.”

The defendant in the case, the National Assembly, considers that there is no legal uncertainty and legislative gap in the jurisdiction of the Civil Code disputed by the applicants. The respondent notes that, in essence, the applicants’ claims are aimed at establishing new statutes of limitation, not at a legislative gap within the existing regulations. “…The respondent considers that Article 344 of the Civil Code corresponds to the Constitution.”

The position of the Constitutional Court on the right to a fair trial

The court found that for the purpose of resolving this constitutional dispute, the need to examine the statute of limitations within the scope of the dispute within the framework of the right to a fair trial provided for by Article 63, Part 1 of the Constitution is no longer necessary. The CC refers to Article 60, Clause 5 of the Constitution. “… Alienation of property with a view to ensuring overriding public interests shall be carried out in exceptional cases and under the procedure prescribed by law, only with prior and equivalent compensation.”

The decision of the Constitutional Court and the conclusions in it make it impossible not to include the demand for preliminary and adequate compensation in the list of exceptions to the general rule of limitation of claims provided for in Article 344 of the Civil Code as a gap in the law.

The court notes: no body of public authority, including the legislator, is empowered to limit the promise of the Constitution to provide “prior and equivalent compensation” provided by the Constitution.

The decision of the Supreme Court

The High Court found Article 344 of the Civil Code to be in accordance with the Constitution and gave its interpretation.

“…in the period from 1 January, 1999 to 1 October, 2006, in disputes arising from the legal relations of alienation of property for the needs of society and the state in the absence of the owner’s consent, failure to provide for the requirement for preliminary prior and equivalent compensation cannot be interpreted as a basis for applying the statute of limitations, because Article 60 of the Constitution Based on Article 5, Part 5 (Article 28, Clause 4 of the 1995 Constitution in effect at the time of expropriation of property), the provisions on the statute of limitations provided by the Civil Code of the Republic of Armenia for claims for prior and equivalent compensation for property expropriated without the consent of the owner they cannot be distributed in general”, the decision states.

The Constitutional Court found that the final judicial act against the applicants is subject to review in accordance with the law, based on the emergence of new circumstances. The decision is final and effective upon publication.

The full decision of the court can be found at the following link.

To remind: during the tenure of the Second President of Armenia, Robert Kocharian (1998-2008), due to the expropriation of the property of the former residents of Northern Avenue and Buzandi Street, the European Court of Human Rights issued judgments against Armenia.

Yeghishe Kirakosyan, the Representative of the Republic of Armenia to the ECHR, reported back in 2019 that as a result of those judgments, the Armenian government has already compensated the former residents of Northern Avenue with 324 thousand 581 euros from the state budget.

Yevgenya Hambardzumyan