Legal Aid in Public Liability Claims for Violations of Human Dignity

Press Release No. 5/2014 of 04 February 2014

Order of 26 December 2013
1 BvR 2531/12

A court may not offhandedly decide on the state’s obligation to pay compensation for violations of human dignity in legal aid proceedings. This follows from a decision of the Third Chamber of the Federal Constitutional Court’s First Senate that was published today, and which continues the existing jurisprudence on the limits of legal aid proceedings. In cases of violations of human dignity, denying monetary compensation generally requires an examination and a balancing of interests during the regular proceedings, since the threshold for the obligation to pay compensation is usually lower than for mere violations of the general right of personality. There is no case-law by higher courts that could have been used to justify the denial under the specific circumstances of the present case.

Facts of the Case and Course of the Proceedings:

In November 2009, the complainant, who is serving a sentence of life imprisonment with subsequent preventive detention for murder, was taken by several prison officers to a hospital because he had a sudden attack of cramping pain in his abdomen. He was placed in handcuffs and shackles which were not even removed during his treatment in hospital. In the presence of the prison officers and police officers he was given a number of enemas in the examination room. He was not permitted to visit the windowless toilet in the examination room. Instead, he had to relieve himself in the presence of the officers by using a commode in the examination room.

A final judgment by the Strafvollstreckungskammer [chamber of the Regional Court for the execution of prison sentences] declared that the security measures, in particular the fact that the complainant was continuously shackled during his stay in hospital, were illegal.

The complainant applied for legal aid in order to file a public liability claim. The Regional Court and the Higher Regional Court denied this application due to insufficient prospects of success. They held that while the shackling constituted a significant interference with the complainant’s general right of personality as well as his human dignity it was, even without monetary compensation, sufficiently compensated by the decision of the Strafvollstreckungskammer.

Key Considerations of the Chamber:

The constitutional complaint is admissible and clearly well-founded. The challenged decision of the Higher Regional Court violates the complainant’s right to equal legal protection under Art. 3 sec. 1 in conjunction with Art. 20 sec. 3 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz – GG) and must therefore be reversed.

It contravenes the principle of equal legal protection if a regular court interprets civil procedural law to the effect that it can already make a substantive decision during legal aid proceedings even when difficult and contentious legal issues are concerned. This is the case if legal aid is denied in case of a contentious compensation claim which has not yet been clarified by case-law and substantially depends on a case-by-case assessment, and if the claim is based on a violation of human dignity which the regular court believes to be valid.
It is true that there is established case-law by the regular courts which – in the abstract – states that not every violation of human dignity must lead to monetary compensation. There is, however, as yet no case-law by higher courts that could be used in the case at hand to already decide conclusively during the summary proceedings whether there is an obligation to provide monetary compensation. To shift this examination to the legal aid proceedings, and to thus exchange the regular proceedings with a mere summary examination, overstretches the requirement of legal aid proceedings to likely have success in the regular proceedings. This applies particularly considering that in case of a violation of human dignity, the materiality threshold for the obligation to pay compensation must be lower than for mere violations of the general right of personality.