ABSTRACT
The applicants, Mr Roman Krèmá, Mrs Marie Hanusová, Mrs Jaroslava Bartosová, Mrs Eduarda Ottová, Mrs Dagmar Rydlová, Mrs Eva Kaòoková, Mrs Michaela Krèmáøová, were successors in title to a company which belonged to members of their family until it was nationalised by the former communist regime in 1945 pursuant to a Presidential Decree. On 22 July 1991, the Czech Government approved a privatisation plan to sell the company to a foreign company. In November 1991, pursuant to the Extra-Judicial Rehabilitations Act and the Transfer of the State’s Property to Other Persons Act, the applicants commenced an action for restitution of the Company against the Ministry for Administration of National Property and its Privatisation. They claimed that the company had been nationalised in a way which violated generally recognised human rights and freedoms and that the Decree had been wrongly applied to their family’s company because the nationalisation conditions laid down in the Decree, in particular the condition that the company should have more than 150 employees, were not satisfied and that the company had therefore been nationalised after February 1948, the decisive date for restitution under the Restitution Act. The Prague 1 District Court found against the applicants. The applicants’ appeals to the Prague Municipal Court, the High Court and the Constitutional Court were dismissed. The applicants complained that they did not have a fair hearing in the proceedings before the Constitutional Court, as the court based its decision on documents which were not considered at the hearing and were not shown to or discussed by the parties. Court found unanimously V 6(1).
