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I find this holding both interesting and surprising and I would be interested in comments from European members who know the governing law better than I do. (I note there is at least one RDG member on the list of counsel!)

- Article 6 is held to be violated by proceedings that went through three levels of courts over 9 years and 2 months. The ECHR accepts that it was complicated litigation and the main problem seems to be that within that time, there were "periods of inactivity for which no satisfactory explanation has been given by the Government", e.g. 17 months between trial judgement and CA hearing. It seems to me the overall timing of the litigation was on the long side for English litigation but not extraordinarily long. Anecdotally my impression is that in a number of countries party to the human rights convention, litigation with the government could normally be expected to last that long. But maybe the ECHR will force a change to this, as has happened in the Canadian criminal justice system, where the implications of the right of criminal accused to be tried within a reasonable time have required huge outlays for new courtrooms and more judges. Even so, the requirement of speedy resolution seems less pressing for civil litigation than criminal accusations.

- he gets EUR5,000 in “non-pecuniary damages” plus EUR2,000 for costs for the breach of Art. 6 – maybe he should have asked for disgorgement of gains??

- my recollection is that it used to be true that the state could choose to ignore the orders of this court; but am I right that this has changed now? Is that due to the Human Rights Act 1998, or did that Act only implement the convention in UK courts?

Lionel

On 27/9/06 07:54, "Ralph M Cunnington" wrote:

Members might be interested to read an ECHR postscript to Blake.