Constitutional Court

KI87/18, Applicant: Insurance Company „IF Skadeforsikring“, Constitutional review of Judgment E. Rev. No. 27/2017 of the Supreme Court of 24 January 2018, which was served on him on 7 March 2018.  

KI87/18, Judgment of 27 February 2019, published on 15 April 2019

Key words: individual referral, judgment, violation of Article 31 of the Constitution and Article 6 of the ECHR 

The Applicant claimed that Article 31 of the Constitution and Article 6 of the ECHR were violated due to the lack of reasoning of the judgment, namely that the Supreme Court did not provide sufficient and adequate reasoning regarding the modification of Judgment Ae. No. 191/2015 of the Court of Appeals, regarding the default interest, by which he considers that the principle of the right to a reasoned court decision was violated, as well as the principle of legal certainty because the court did not have consistent case law, for which he submitted to the court several decisions of the Supreme Court.

Having considered all the circumstances of the case, the Court concluded that the Supreme Court, in comparative judgments that fully corresponded to the legal and factual situation of the judgment in question, rendered judgments with a legal reasoning that differ from the challenged judgment, as regards the calculation of the interest rate and the calculation of time limits, as well as the issue of the applicability of law.

Moreover, the Court noted that the Supreme Court, in comparative judgments, did not take a consistent position regarding the calculation of interest rates, and provided various legal reasoning. As such, they lead to the conclusion that the practice of the Supreme Court on this issue is not consistent, and this directly affects legal certainty.

Therefore, the Constitutional Court found that the Supreme Court, as a court of the last instance for deciding in a present case of the Applicant, taking a different position in the challenged judgment in a case that is completely identical or similar to other cases, without providing a clear and sufficient reasoning for this, violated the rights of the Applicant to a reasoned court decision, which led to the violation of the principles of legal certainty, as one of the basic components of the rule of law, which is also an inseparable element of the right to a fair trial under Article 31 of the Constitution and Article 6 paragraph 1 of the ECHR.