{"id":338,"date":"2009-05-09T13:34:13","date_gmt":"2009-05-09T20:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/?p=338"},"modified":"2009-05-09T13:34:13","modified_gmt":"2009-05-09T20:34:13","slug":"grinberg-v-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/2009\/05\/grinberg-v-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Grinberg v. Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ECHR case of Grinberg v. Russia<\/strong> (application no. 23472\/03).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

..<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS<\/span><\/p>\n

410<\/span><\/p>\n

21.7.2005<\/span><\/p>\n

Press release issued by the Registrar<\/span><\/p>\n

CHAMBER JUDGMENT<\/span>
\nGRINBERG v. RUSSIA<\/span><\/p>\n

The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing a judgment1<\/sup><\/span><\/span><\/a> in the case of Grinberg v. Russia <\/span>(application no. 23472\/03).<\/p>\n

The Court held unanimously that there had been a violation<\/span> of Article 10<\/span> (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights.<\/p>\n

Under Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention, the Court awarded the applicant 120 euros (EUR) for pecuniary damage and EUR 1,000 for costs and expenses. (The judgment is available only in English.)<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0Principal facts<\/span><\/p>\n

The applicant, Isaak Pavlovich Grinberg, is a Russian national who was born in 1937 and lives in Ulyanovsk, Russia.<\/p>\n

On 6 September 2002 the Guberniya<\/span> newspaper published an article by the applicant about General V.A. Shamanov, who had been elected Governor of the Ulyanovsk Region, claiming that he was \u201cwaging war\u201d against the independent press and journalists. In the article he also referred to Mr Shamanov\u2019s support for a colonel who had killed a 18-year-old <\/a>Chechen<\/strong> girl and concluded the piece with the words \u201c no shame and no scruples!<\/span>\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 10 September 2002 Mr Shamanov brought a civil defamation action against the applicant, the editor\u2019s office and the newspaper\u2019s founder \u2013 the Fund for Assistance to Disenfranchised Communities Goryachev-Fond<\/span>. He claimed that the assertion alleging that he had \u201cno shame and no scruples\u201d was untrue and damaging to his honour and reputation.<\/p>\n

On 14 November 2002, Leninskiy District Court of Ulyanovsk found that the assertion that Mr Shamanov had no shame and no scruples impaired his honour, dignity and professional reputation and that the applicant had not proved the truthfulness of his claim. The court held the fund liable for RUR 5,000 (EUR 200) and the applicant liable for RUR 2,500 (EUR 100) in respect of non-pecuniary damage to Mr Shamanov. The fund was also ordered to publish, by way of rectification, the operative part of the judgment.<\/p>\n

The applicant appealed, pointing out that the district court had failed to distinguish opinions from statements. He submitted that his right to hold and impart opinions was guaranteed by Article 29 of the Russian Constitution and that the contested statement was his personal opinion and a commonly-used Russian idiom.<\/p>\n

On 24 December 2002 Ulyanovsk Regional Court upheld the judgment of 14 November 2002, finding that: \u201cThe arguments… about the court\u2019s confusion of the term \u2018opinions\u2019 and the term \u2018statements\u2019 (\u0441\u0432\u0435\u0434\u0435\u043d\u0438\u044f<\/span>) cannot be taken into account because [the applicant\u2019s] opinion had been printed in a public medium and from the moment of publication it became a statement\u201d.<\/p>\n

The applicant\u2019s subsequent attempts to initiate supervisory review proceedings proved unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0Procedure and composition of the Court<\/span><\/p>\n

The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 23 June 2003 and declared admissible on 28 October 2004.<\/p>\n

Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:<\/p>\n

Christos Rozakis<\/span> (Greek), President<\/span>,
\nPeer Lorenzen<\/span> (Danish),
\nNina Vaji\u0107<\/span> (Croatian),
\nSnejana Botoucharova<\/span> (Bulgarian),
\nAnatoli Kovler<\/span> (Russian),
\nElisabeth Steiner<\/span> (Austrian),
\nKhanlar Hajiyev<\/span> (Azerbaijani), judges<\/span>,<\/p>\n

and also Santiago Quesada<\/span>, Deputy Section Registrar<\/span>.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0Summary of the judgment<\/span>2<\/sup><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Complaint<\/span><\/p>\n

The applicant complained of a violation of his right to impart information and ideas, relying on Article 10 of the Convention.<\/p>\n

Decision of the Court<\/span><\/p>\n

The Court noted that it was common ground between the parties that the judgments pronounced in the defamation action constituted an \u201cinterference\u201d with the applicant\u2019s<\/span> right to freedom of expression. Neither was it contested that the interference was \u201cprescribed by law\u201d \u2013 notably Article 152 of the Civil Code \u2013 and \u201cpursued a legitimate aim\u201d, that of protecting the reputation or rights of others. The dispute in the case related to whether the interference was \u201cnecessary in a democratic society\u201d, this is, whether the \u201cinterference\u201d complained of corresponded to a \u201cpressing social need\u201d, whether it was proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued and whether the reasons given by the national authorities to justify it were relevant and sufficient.<\/p>\n

One factor of particular importance for the Court\u2019s determination in the applicant\u2019s case was the distinction between statements of fact and value judgments. The domestic courts held the applicant liable for his failure to prove the truthfulness of his assertion that Mr Shamanov had \u201cno shame and no scruples\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Court noted that the Russian law on defamation, as it stood at the material time, made no distinction between value judgments and statements of fact, as it referred uniformly to \u201cstatements\u201d (\u00ab\u0441\u0432\u0435\u0434\u0435\u043d\u0438\u044f\u00bb<\/span>) and proceeded from the assumption that any such statement were amenable to proof in civil proceedings. Irrespective of the actual contents of the \u201cstatements\u201d, the person who disseminated them had to satisfy the courts as to their truthfulness. Having regard to those legislative provisions, the domestic courts did not embark on an analysis of whether the applicant\u2019s contested statement could have been a value judgment not susceptible of proof.<\/p>\n

However, the Court reiterated that, while the existence of facts could be demonstrated, the truth of value judgments was not susceptible of proof. The requirement to prove the truth of a value judgment was impossible to fulfil and an infringement of freedom of opinion, a fundamental part of the right secured by Article\u00a010.<\/p>\n

The Court considered the contested comment a quintessential example of a value judgment. The finding of the applicant\u2019s liability for the pretended damage to Mr Shamanov\u2019s reputation was solely based on his failure to show that Mr Shamanov had indeed lacked \u201cshame and scruples\u201d, which was impossible to prove.<\/p>\n

It was also relevant for the Court\u2019s assessment that the contested statement was made in the context of an article concerning an issue of public interest, that of freedom of the media in the Ulyanovsk region. It\u00a0criticised the conduct of the regional governor, elected by a popular vote; in other words, a professional politician in respect of whom the limits of acceptable criticism were wider than in the case of a private individual. The facts which gave rise to the criticism were not contested and the applicant expressed his view in an inoffensive manner.<\/p>\n

The domestic courts did not convincingly establish any pressing social need for putting the protection of the politician\u2019s reputation above the applicant\u2019s right to freedom of expression and the general interest in promoting that freedom where issues of public interest were concerned. In particular, it did not appear from the domestic courts\u2019 judgments that the applicant\u2019s statement affected Mr Shamanov\u2019s political career or his professional life.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, the Court found that the interference complained of was not \u201cnecessary in a democratic society\u201d and that there had therefore been a violation of Article 10.<\/p>\n

\n

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The ECHR case of Grinberg v. Russia (application no. 23472\/03).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-echr-cases"],"views":1509,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340,"href":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}