The abstract of the judgment (The judgment is available only in Georgian). Abstracts published by the Constitutional Court of Georgia summarise the facts of the case and key legal considerations of the judgment.

Abstract

On 18 April 2019, the Constitutional Court rendered its judgment on the case of “Irakli Khvedelidze v. The Parliament of Georgia” (constitutional complaint №1263). The disputed provision envisaged the possibility of appealing an order issued in the case of an administrative offence within 10 days after the order was issued.

The claimant pointed out that the time prescribed for appealing the order commenced to run after announcing the resolution of the judgment, and not from the moment when one received a reasoned ruling. Accordingly, the claimant was forced to present an appeal within 10 days, even in cases where due to the court overload or other reasons, a ruling had not been delivered to a person concerned. The claimant argued that such a regulation of appealing a ruling reduced efficacy of protecting one’s rights through the appellation procedure and was in breach of the right to a fair trial.

According to the respondent’s position, not delivering a ruling before the expiration of the appeal timeframe did not negatively affect the right to appeal, given that in case of presenting an appeal within the 10 days, insufficient argumentation would not have been considered as one of the grounds for inadmissibility of the appeal and the appellant would have had the right to present an argumentation later. In addition, the responded referred to prevention of administrative offences and timely and rapid reaction to administrative offences as legitimate aims.

Referring to the Georgian legislation and the jurisprudence of common courts, the Constitutional Court noted that in case of non-timely delivery of the ruling, a person willing to appeal would have had the right to present an appeal within 10 days without proper argumentation, and after receiving a reasoned order, he/she would have had the right to present respective argumentation regarding its unlawfulness. Thus, a person was forced to bring an appeal without being aware of legal and factual grounds of the ruling. Under these circumstances, efficiency of the right to appeal, as well as the possibility of the higher instance court to assess legality of the ruling was being significantly reduced. The Court pointed out that in cases of non-compliance with the timeframe of delivering a ruling to a person concerned, the latter was forced to appeal formally, and only later present a substantiated/reasoned version of the appeal to the court, which in part precluded efficient realization of the right to appeal and created additional obstacles for exercising the right to a fair trial. .

The Constitutional Court noted that while examining an appeal, the Court of Appeals had to assess legality and reasoning of the appealed ruling. Hence, the Court of Appeals could not have adjudicated upon the case without a reasoned claim for appeal and reasoned ruling of the court. According to the Constitutional Court, forcing a person concerned to bring an appeal within a 10-day limit in all cases could not have accelerated the process of adjudicating upon the claim and rendering a relevant judgment. This process was objectively linked not to the deadline for bringing an appeal, but to the adoption of a reasoned ruling by the first instance court. Taking into account all the aforementioned, the Constitutional Court ruled that the disputed provision could not guarantee achieve of legitimate aims – rendering a judgment in a case of administrative offences rapidly/timely reaction to administrative offences - and that it disproportionately limit the right to a fair trial.

The Constitutional Court noted that in case of declaring a disputed provision void immediately, there would be no time limit prescribed for appealing a ruling of the Court, which in certain cases is related to important issues such as entry into a force of the resolutin of the court, its legal effects, etc. and thus in order to avoid harming important legitimate interests, the Constitutional Court postponed invalidation of the disputed provision until 1 July 2019.