Revision of court decisions based on newly discovered circumstances in civil proceedings in the practice of the Supreme Court

Abstract

The article deals with the institute of review of judicial decisions under newly discovered circumstances in the practice of the Supreme Court. The review of judicial decisions on newly discovered circumstances must comply with the international standards of fair trial enshrined in para 1 of Article 6 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, according to which the specified type of review is characterized as extraordinary and should comply the principle of res judicata.
 The practice of the Civil Court of Cassation and the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court raises a number of problematic issues related to the application of the updated provisions of the civil procedure legislation concerning the review of judgments on newly discovered circumstances following the amendments to the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine in 2017. Such problematic issues include peculiarities of interpretation of the notion of newly discovered circumstances, persons, entitled to apply to a court with an application for revision of court decisions under newly discovered circumstances, determination of an appropriate court, where an application should be filed, court powers based on the results of consideration of relevant applications and peculiarities of their consideration. The author concludes that it is necessary to expand the interpretation of the concept of the ‘participants of the case’ as the persons, who can filed an application to the court for revision of judicial decisions on newly discovered circumstances. Besides, the legal problem connected with different interpretation of powers of the court of cassation on reconsideration of judicial decisions in the mentioned category of cases, arisen in practice of the Civil Court of Cassation and the Economic Court of Cassation within the structure of the Supreme Court, was analyzed. The author's position is that the Civil Court of Cassation is not entitled to consider the application on review of court decisions on the newly discovered circumstances on the merits as a result of the retrial of the judgment of the lower courts, because only the court, which delivered the first judgment is empowered to do so.