Judgment concerning Georgia
In the case of Tsulukidze and Rusulashvili v. Georgia the Court held that there had been a violation of the right to a fair trial.
The case concerned the alleged lack of impartiality of a Supreme Court judge who was a member of three-judge panels which rejected claims brought by the applicants and whose judicial assistant was the daughter of the lawyer of the respondent party, the Telasi electricity distribution company, in those proceedings.
The Court found that the fact that the judge’s judicial assistant was the daughter of Telasi’s legal representative, coupled with the broad mandate given to judicial assistants in the Georgian judicial system, had created a situation which legitimately could raise doubts as to the impartiality of the judge. The applicants had not known to what extent the judicial assistant had actually been involved in their cases, and the Supreme Court had failed to elucidate the circumstances of her involvement, thereby failing to dispel their doubts concerning the impartiality of that judge. The Court therefore found that their doubts were objectively justified and that they had not been provided with sufficient procedural safeguards in this respect.