On May 10, 2023, the First Senate of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, in the public part of the plenary session, in the form of written proceedings, deliberated the case based upon the constitutional complaint of Mykyta Yevstifeiev on the constitutionality of paragraph 2 of Article 389.3 of the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine (hereinafter referred as the Code).
At the plenary session, the Judge-Rapporteur in the case Oksana Hryschuk outlined the content of the constitutional complaint and the grounds for initiating the constitutional proceedings.
As the Judge-Rapporteur noted, Mykyta Yevstifeiev applied to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine with a request to verify the constitutionality of paragraph 2 of Article 389.3 of the Code, according to which the following are not subject to cassation appeal:
„2) court decisions in minor cases and in cases with a claim price not exceeding two hundred and fifty amounts of the subsistence minimum for able-bodied persons, except for cases, if:
a) the cassation appeal concerns a question of law that is of fundamental importance for the formation of a unified law enforcement practice;
b) the person filing the cassation appeal is deprived of the opportunity to refute the circumstances established by the appealed court decision in the course of consideration of another case in accordance with this Code;
c) the case is of significant public interest or of exceptional importance for the party to the case filing the cassation appeal;
d) the court of first instance mistakenly classified the case as insignificant“.
The content of the constitutional complaint and the documents and materials attached to it follows. In June 2021, the applicant filed a lawsuit with the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv against the State Treasury Service of Ukraine, in which he sought to recover UAH 59,257 in his favour for damage caused by an unconstitutional legal act.
The first instance and appellate courts dismissed the claims. Disagreeing with these court decisions, Mykyta Yevstifeiev appealed against them in cassation. However, the Supreme Court refused to open cassation proceedings on his cassation appeal, based on the provisions of paragraph 1 of Article 19.6, paragraph 2 of Article 389.3 of the Code.
The subject of the right to constitutional complaint believes that paragraph 2 Article 389.3 of the Code contradicts Article 8.1, Article 22.3, and Article 24.1 of the Constitution of Ukraine, given that:
- „the legislator’s establishment of restrictions on cassation appeal of court decisions depending on the subject matter of the dispute and the amount of the claim was a narrowing of the content and scope of the constitutional right to cassation appeal of court decisions“;
- „the legislator has introduced discriminatory legal regulation by restricting access to the court of cassation depending on circumstances that are not relevant to the purpose of these restrictions“;
- „the wording of the grounds for cassation appeal of court decisions in minor cases does not meet the requirements of legal certainty“.
The judge-rapporteur informed that the Second Senate of the Court is considering three cases with a similar subject matter.
After studying the case file in the public part of the plenary session, the First Senate proceeded to the in-camera part for a decision.
The session was attended by the complaintant, Mykyta Yevstifeiev, and the Permanent Representative of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, Maksym Dyrdin.
The public part of the plenary session is available on the official website of the Court at the following link: https://ccu.gov.ua/kategoriya/2023.
