Přehled
Rozhodnutí
FIRST SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 29338/22
GRADEL D.O.O.
against Croatia
The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting on 30 April 2026 as a Committee composed of:
Artūrs Kučs, President,
Davor Derenčinović,
Anna Adamska-Gallant, judges,
and Liv Tigerstedt, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 29338/22) against the Republic of Croatia lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 1 June 2022 by Gradel d.o.o. (“the applicant company”), a company registered in Croatia in 1995, with its seat in Velika Gorica, which was represented by Mr A. Šagovac, a lawyer practising in Velika Gorica;
the decision to give notice of the complaint concerning Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention to the Croatian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Ms Š. Stažnik, and declare inadmissible the remainder of the application;
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The application concerns the order to pay allegedly unreasonable costs imposed on the applicant company in civil proceedings.
2. In 2010 the applicant company concluded a contract with a certain V., undertaking to renovate his house.
3. In 2012 V. transferred his house to his children D. and I. by way of a gift contract.
4. In 2013 the applicant company instituted proceedings against V., seeking payment for its renovation services of his house in the amount of approximately 63,000 euros (EUR).
5. In 2016 V. died and the proceedings were eventually taken over by his children, D. and I., as his successors, who submitted that they could be liable for any debt of their late predecessor only up to the value of the inherited property.
6. By a first instance judgment of 12 July 2018 issued by the Rijeka Municipal Court, it was established that the outstanding debt of the works not paid to the applicant company amounted to some EUR 52,000. However, since D. and I. were liable only up to the value of the inherited property, which was approximately EUR 4,500, the applicant company was awarded that amount in compensation. The house on which the works had been performed was not calculated as part of the inheritance since it had been gifted by V. to D. and I. prior to his death (see paragraph 3 above). The applicant company’s subsequent objection against that gift contract submitted in 2018 was dismissed by the court as being lodged outside the statutory three‑year time‑limit.
7. Upon appeal by the applicant company, by a judgment of 3 December 2019, the Bjelovar County Court upheld the lower court’s judgment and, taking as a basis of the calculation the value of the subject matter in dispute for every action undertaken, it ordered the applicant company to reimburse the costs of proceedings to the respondent’s heirs in the amount of some EUR 4,400.
8. The applicant’s subsequent petition for appeal on points of law and constitutional complaint were dismissed as unfounded.
9. Before the Court, the applicant company complained, relying on Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, that the order to pay costs violated its property rights.
THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT
10. The relevant general principles concerning unreasonable costs of proceedings have been summarised in Čolić v. Croatia (no. 49083/18, §§ 67‑70, 18 November 2021), Cindrić and Bešlić v. Croatia (no. 72152/13, §§ 91‑111, 6 September 2016) and Klauz v. Croatia (no. 28963/10, §§ 108‑10, 18 July 2013).
11. The applicant company was ordered to pay the defendants costs of proceedings in an amount which almost equalled the amount it had been awarded as compensation (see paragraphs 6 and 7 above). Such a situation may, in principle, raise an issue under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, unless there are weighty reasons to justify such a result (see Čolić, cited above, § 69).
12. In this connection, the Court notes that, once V. died, his heirs took over the proceedings and relied on a statutory provision that they could only be held liable for V.’s debt in the amount of the inherited property. However, despite this change of defendants and their new submission, the applicant company did not amend its claim but instead argued that it should still be awarded the full amount it had sought claiming that the gift contract between V. and his children had been aimed at avoiding payment of V.’s debt. Consequently, the parties must have incurred additional costs because the value of the subject matter of the dispute remained in a higher grade of the renumeration scale according to the Scale of Advocate’s Fee (see, a contrario, Čolić, cited above, §§ 14 and 56).
13. As regards the applicant company’s above argument that the gift contract between V. and his children had been aimed at avoiding payment of V.’s debt, the Court notes that two instances of domestic courts concluded in well-reasoned judgments that the applicant company had failed to challenge the gift contract within the statutory time-limit, that is to say, within three years of the conclusion of the contested contract (see paragraph 6 above). It is not the Court’s role to question the interpretation of domestic law by the national courts, unless their findings can be regarded as arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable (compare, for example, Bochan v. Ukraine (no. 2) [GC], no. 22251/08, § 61, ECHR 2015), which in the present case it cannot.
14. The foregoing two factors are, in the Court’s view, sufficiently weighty reasons to justify the financially unfavourable outcome for the applicant company in the present case. Such outcome was primarily the result of the above-described procedural shortcomings, namely the applicant company’s failure to amend its claim or to challenge the gift contract between V. and his children within the statutory time-limit (contrast Čolić, cited above, § 59 in fine). In those circumstances, the heirs’ liability was limited to the amount ultimately awarded to the applicant company and the high costs of the proceedings were the consequence of the high value of the amount claimed by the applicant company throughout the proceedings. In the circumstances, the Court considers that the manner in which the domestic courts applied the domestic legislation in the present case remained within their margin of appreciation under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention.
15. It follows that the application is manifestly ill‑founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 21 May 2026.
Liv Tigerstedt Artūrs Kučs
Deputy Registrar President