SECOND SECTION
\nDECISION<\/p>\n
Application no. 45366\/14
\nJosip MAJCAN
\nagainst Croatia<\/p>\n
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 18\u00a0September 2018 as a Chamber composed of:<\/p>\n
I\u015f\u0131lKaraka\u015f, President,
\nJulia Laffranque,
\nPaul Lemmens,
\nValeriu Gri\u0163co,
\nKsenijaTurkovi\u0107,
\nJon Fridrik Kj\u00f8lbro,
\nGeorges Ravarani, judges,
\nand Stanley Naismith, Section Registrar,<\/p>\n
Having regard to the above application lodged on 16 June 2014,<\/p>\n
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant,<\/p>\n
Having deliberated, decides as follows:<\/p>\n
THE FACTS<\/strong><\/p>\n 1.\u00a0\u00a0The applicant, Mr Josip Majcan, is a Croatian national who was born in 1943 and lives in Buzet. He was represented before the Court by Mr\u00a0I.\u00a0Milanovi\u0107, a lawyer practising in Umag.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0\u00a0The Croatian Government (\u201cthe Government\u201d) were represented by their Agent, Ms \u0160. Sta\u017enik.<\/p>\n A.\u00a0\u00a0The circumstances of the case<\/strong><\/p>\n 3.\u00a0\u00a0The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0\u00a0Background to the case<\/em><\/p>\n 4.\u00a0\u00a0The legal system of the former Yugoslavia prohibited the acquisition of ownership of socially owned property by adverse possession (dosjelost) unless the statutory requirements for doing so had been met by 6\u00a0April\u00a01941.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0\u00a0On 8 October 1991 the Croatian Parliament lifted the above-mentioned ban.<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0\u00a0Subsequently, the new Property Act of 1996, which entered into force on 1 January 1997, provided in section 388(4) that the period prior to 8\u00a0October 1991 was to be included in calculating the period for acquiring ownership of socially owned immovable property by adverse possession.<\/p>\n 7.\u00a0\u00a0By a decision of 17 November 1999 the Constitutional Court invalidated that provision as being contrary to the Croatian Constitution.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0\u00a0Proceedings in the present case<\/em><\/p>\n 8.\u00a0\u00a0On 6 November 2006 the applicant brought a civil action against the State in the Buzet Municipal Court (Op\u0107inskisud u Buzetu), seeking to be declared the owner of twelve plots of land and to have them registered in his name in the land register. He submitted that the property at issue, even though it had been recorded in the land register as being in social ownership, had been in his and his ancestors\u2019 possession since the 1890s. Given that the statutory period for acquiring ownership by adverse possession had elapsed, the applicant claimed to have acquired ownership of the land.<\/p>\n 9.\u00a0\u00a0By a judgment of 24 June 2008 the Buzet Municipal Court ruled in favour of the applicant.<\/p>\n 10.\u00a0\u00a0Following an appeal by the State, on 12 April 2010 the Pula County Court (\u017dupanijskisud u Puli) quashed the first-instance judgment and remitted the case for fresh consideration.<\/p>\n 11.\u00a0\u00a0In resumed proceedings, by a judgment of 24 December 2012 the Pazin Municipal Court (Op\u0107inskisud u Pazinu), to which the Buzet Municipal Court had in the meantime been annexed, dismissed the applicant\u2019s action.<\/p>\n 12.\u00a0\u00a0On 16 December 2013 the Pula County Court dismissed an appeal by the applicant and upheld the first-instance judgment, which thereby became final.<\/p>\n 13.\u00a0\u00a0The ordinary courts found that the applicant had proved that he and his predecessors had been in continuous possession of the property in good faith since 1947 until the present day, but not before that period. That being so, and given that in the period between 6 April 1941 and 8\u00a0October 1991 it had been legally impossible to acquire ownership of socially owned property by adverse possession (see paragraph 4 above), the statutory time\u2011limit for doing so could not, in the applicant\u2019s case, have even started to run before 8\u00a0October 1991. Furthermore, the time between 8\u00a0October\u00a01991 and the dates on which those courts had given their judgments was not sufficiently long as ownership of State-owned immovable property could have been acquired by adverse possession only after forty years of continuous uninterrupted possession in good faith.<\/p>\n 14.\u00a0\u00a0On 31 October 2013 the applicant lodged a constitutional complaint. He complained that the ordinary courts had dismissed his action and infringed his constitutionally guaranteed right of ownership because they had wrongly assessed the evidence. In particular, the courts had held that he had managed to prove that his ancestors had been in continuous possession of the property in question since 1947 but not before only because none of the witnesses who had given evidence in the proceedings had been born before 1943. In addition, the courts had completely ignored the statement given by one of the two oldest witnesses, who had testified that his father had told him that the land in question had been in the possession of the applicant\u2019s family even before 1947. In that way the ordinary courts had disregarded the collective memory of the small village (consisting of only ten houses) in which the land was located, where each family had known for generations which land belonged to whom and passed this information on by word of mouth from one generation to another.<\/p>\n 15.\u00a0\u00a0By a decision of 11 December 2013 the Constitutional Court declared the applicant\u2019s constitutional complaint inadmissible, finding that the case did not raise any constitutional issues. The court served its decision on the applicant\u2019s representative on 20 December 2013.<\/p>\n