We bring you an important legal opinion of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic on the issue of the delivery of official consignments to the courts in relation to the place of work.
This is the order of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic of 17 July 2019, sp. zn. 7Cdo51/2019, which was published in the Collection of Opinions of the Supreme Court and the decisions of the courts of the Slovak Republic in the amount of 3/2020, i.e. it is a decision of fundamental importance for decision-making practice (established decision-making practice of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic).
"If the court of first instance finds, when applying section 116 CSP, that the defendant has a stable employment relationship and does not stay at the address registered in the Register of Residents of the Slovak Republic and does not attempt to bring an action against him at the workplace, he may violate his right to a fair trial; this does not apply if it is established in a sufficient manner that the defendant was aware of the dispute.'
In the present case, the defendant asked the court to annul the contested decision at first instance or to forgive him for missing the time limit for lodging an appeal.
He argued that the right to a fair trial and the rules laid down in the Civil Litigation Code had been violated. The infringement should have occurred in such a way that the court did not attempt to deliver the court letter to the employer's address, even though he was aware of his place of employment.
The Supreme Court confirmed that the defendant's right to a fair trial had been violated in the present case. This is because the defendant was also not served with the application for his employment if the court was aware of this. The defendant had no knowledge of the present proceedings and therefore that partial infringement had an even greater impact on the defendant's rights.
For the sake of completeness, we would like to add, although section 46(1) of the Civil Procedure Code (the regulation governing the procedural rules prior to the adoption of the Civil Procedure Code) - 'The addressee may be served with a document in an apartment ..., at the workplace or wherever he is caught' — it has not been expressly taken into the new regulation of the Civil Procedure Code, even though the civil procedure scheme applies by means of § 116 CSP (actual residence of the defendant). This provision of § 116 is a special provision governing the service of an action on a natural person compared to the general regulation on the address for service referred to in § 106 CSP (address specified in the Register of Residents of the Slovak Republic).
The resolution is available at: https://www.nsud.sk/data/files/2435_zbierka-03_2020-final.pdf
