THE DECISION OF THE COURT STAYED ON THE PAPER

Some years ago I lend money to my neighbor without interest who then became alky and non-payable. I had to apply to the court. The judicial procedure lasted one year after which the worker of the Judicial acts’ enforcement service advised me to sell by the court the house of my neighbor which belonged to his son also. This procedure lasted approximately 3 years. Now the Judicial acts’ enforcement service tells that the house cannot be sold as they are not able to find the son of my neighbor in order to give his consent to sell the house by bargaining. So, the decision of the court stayed on the paper. If the State does not respect its citizen it should respect the statement “HANUN Republic of Armenia” based on which the decision was made. What can you advise me? Please, help me.

ARMEN, Yerevan

Armen’s angriness is understandable but is not proportional. One should not get angry with the country, one should struggle against illegalities in the country. I think in this case judicial procedures took place with violations of the procedural deadlines and the reason of that is the following: the deadlines are excluded from the Civil Procedural Act, and there are some judges which under the term “reasonable time period” understand examining the case for months, even for years. Now concerning the functions of the Judicial acts’ enforcement service I would like to emphasis that as such functions are realized by only one state authority body the situation would remain the same unless we do not have any alternative service. In many post soviet countries there exist many non-state services which enforce the judicial acts in the country and the lender is free to choose any of them.

It is important to know that right to fair trail includes not only fair and legal decision making by the court in reasonable time period but also the supervision by the state over the enforcement of the legally binding decision of the court.

In this case you should consider not enforcing the legally binding decision of the court as  violation of the rights of  lender in spite of the fact that it was based on some articles of the Law on enforcement of the judicial acts and again defend your rights in the court by appealing the actions or not acting of the serviceman of the given service. If you have no success in internal judicial system and you have exhausted all the internal remedies  then you should apply to the European Court of Human Rights which has judicial precedents in which it has already been articulated the principle  of enforcing legally binding court decisions.