Section 6 of the Civil Code, Act No. 40/1964 Coll., stated that an owner had the right to protect its ownership rights by self-help, as follows: “Should there be an immediate threat of the unlawful infringement of a right, the threatened party may avert the infringement itself, in an adequate manner.” The New Civil Code (NCC) adopted this provision in Section 14 (2), where it sets the limits of such intervention: “Should there be an immediate threat of the unlawful infringement of a right, anyone so threatened may avert such infringement by effort or means that must be appropriate to a person in their position under the circumstances.”

An interpretation of this provision of the Civil Code, also applicable to the aforementioned provision of the NCC, was recently given by the Supreme Court in its judgement of 29 January 2015 in case no. 25 Cdo 1335/2013.

The defendant was the owner of land leased to the plaintiff for the purposes of running a plant nursery, and for this purpose had been planted with ornamental shrubs. However, due to the invalidity of the lease agreement, the premises were used by the plaintiff without legal grounds, which is the reason the defendant had filed legal action for eviction from the land. Because proceedings were still pending, even after 11 years, the defendant had had the land cleared and the shrubs cut down and destroyed. The plaintiff subsequently filed legal action against the defendant claiming compensation for damages incurred through this intervention.

In its judgement, the Supreme Court concluded that the vegetation on the land was being used as cultivating material for further transplanting, and so had not become part of the land as permanent vegetation, and was therefore a movable asset, still owned by the plaintiff.

The fact that the defendant had decided to clear his land, which was being used without legal grounds, cannot in itself, in the view of the Supreme Court, be considered unlawful; the owner undoubtedly had the right to clear his property by self-help, however, compliance with the conditions of Section 6 of the Civil Code must be considered. These conditions refer to the appropriateness of intervention, or as the Supreme Court states, “self-help to enforce one’s rights can only be used as a means of legal protection in exceptional cases subject rules embodied in the principle of appropriateness, as the infringement of rights may only be averted in a manner appropriate to the manner, circumstances and intensity of the threatened infringement.”

In principal, according to the court, self-help is possible in cases where the help of public authorities cannot be effectively invoked, and in exceptional cases where there is an immediate threat of the infringement of rights that does not allow the threatened party to use standard procedures to obtain a court decision and its subsequent enforcement.

However, according to the Supreme Court, the damage or destruction of another party’s property goes beyond this framework, even in the case of permitted self-help. Therefore, if property belonging to a party other than the owner of the land is damaged during self-help eviction of land, this is considered unlawful self-help, which exceeds the condition of appropriateness, and for this reason, the party against whom self-help was applied has the right to compensation for damaged and destroyed property.

Eviction from property used without legal grounds is a frequent subject of legal disputes. One can therefore easily imagine a case where the owner of a property terminates a lease agreement with a tenant due to unpaid rent, and the subsequent dispute for eviction from the property lasts a number of years, during which the owner is severely restricted in the ability to economically use the property in any way. In such a case, self-help eviction appears to be the only effective solution.

According to the Supreme Court, such self-help eviction is possible, however care must be taken not to damage the evicted party’s property. For example, if the owner evicts a tenant in this way by, for example, leaving their property in boxes outside the house, it would be liable for any damage to this property (for example, theft, rain damage, etc.).

It is therefore recommended that when clearing out properties, owners place particular emphasis on safeguarding the property of evicted parties and that they place this property in, for example, court or notarial custody, or in another safe place. The owner of the property can then seek recovery of the costs of safekeeping such property from the evicted party.

For more information, please contact our office’s partner, Mgr. Jiří Kučera, e-mail: jkucera@kuceralegal.cz ; tel.: +420604242241.