Case Summary and Outcome

This case concerned a prosecutor who filed defamation claims against a journalist who published articles alleging that the prosecutor had falsified evidence in two cases concerning a third party. The journalist’s trial conviction for defamation was overturned on appeal. The prosecutor then filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) alleging that the journalist’s articles violated the prosecutor’s Article 8 right to respect for private and family life. The ECtHR found an Article 8 violation.

Facts

The Applicant, Elena Lavric, was a public prosecutor in Romania who charged a third party with two crimes, one in 2000 and one in 2001. The Respondent was a journalist who published two articles in 2002 concerning the aforementioned charges, after the third party filed a complaint against the Applicant alleging prosecutorial malpractice.

Although the malpractice case against the Applicant was eventually dismissed, the Respondent published two articles in which he claimed that the Applicant had intentionally falsified evidence during the prosecutorial proceedings against the third party. The first article was titled, “Judicial corruption. Prosecutor L. falsified two indictments! An innocent person was sentenced to prison.” The second article was titled, “E.L., the prosecutor who falsifies indictments.” Despite these allegations, the Applicant was never found to have falsified any evidence or to have committed any kind of malpractice.

The Applicant sued the journalist for defamation, and the trial court found in her favor. On appeal, however, the journalist’s conviction was vacated and the case was remanded for further consideration in the context of protecting journalists’ freedom of expression as “necessary in a democratic society.” The Applicant then filed an application with the ECtHR alleging that the Romanian courts had violated her Article 8 right to respect for private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”).

Decision Overview

In reaching its decision, the ECtHR noted that Romania had a positive obligation to ensure respect for the Applicant’s Article 8 right to a private life. Significantly, the ECtHR explicitly read a right to reputation into Article 8 ECHR, and accordingly, noted that Romania had a positive obligation to protect the Applicant’s right to reputation.

The ECtHR explained that, although consideration of the Applicant’s status as a public figure was appropriate, such a status does not excuse the Respondent from demonstrating a sufficient factual basis for the claims made in the published articles. In striking the appropriate balance between the freedom of expression and the right to reputation, the Court found that the journalist had not written the articles with the appropriate care required to incur freedom of expression protections. And in failing to provide an adequate remedy to the Applicant for the journalist’s affront on her right to reputation, Romania had not met its positive obligations to the Applicant to protect that right.

Thus, the ECtHR found a violation of Article 8 ECHR because the Romanian government had failed to protect the Applicant’s right to reputation and had failed to provide an adequate remedy.