The day he was appointed to the Chamber for Civil and Economic Cases of the Court of Cassation, Judge Suren Antonyan, formerly of the Court of Appeal for Civil Cases, and member of the Judiciary Council of Armenia, asked contesting parties to exit the courtroom and passed a verdict without examining the case. According to our information, this daring act provoked amazement even among judges who have never been noted for their attention to the law.

On September 8, 2004 the Court of Appeal for Civil Cases was scheduled to examine for the second time (after it had been rejected by the Court of Cassation) the petition of the residents of # 15 Amiryan Street against the Yerevan Municipality and a third party to the case, Tornik Eva, Ltd., requesting that the September 9, 2002 Decision # 1538-A and the June 6, 2003 Decision # 1251-A by the mayor of Yerevan be declared null and void, and that the illegal construction work in their backyard be halted.

With these decisions, the mayor had allocated the entire area of the backyard of building # 15 on Amiryan Street - 100 square meters - to Tornik Eva, Ltd, to construct an auto-repair shop. Building residents claimed that a number of their rights had been violated, in particular, their fire safety and sanitary protection were no longer guaranteed.

Lawyer Inessa Petrosyan. a respondent in the case, told us that the presiding judge, Suren Antonyan, had informed her in advance that the September 8 th court session had been postponed, and had asked her to inform building residents. "Nevertheless, I went to the courthouse with my colleague, lawyer Lusine Bakumyan, who had some other business in court, just in case, to make sure that the session was postponed and to find out when it would take place. The judge's assistant informed me that the session was to begin. I hastily wrote a solicitation to postpone the session and I called some building residents, and three of them arrived at the court house," Petrosyan said.

She said us that the session scheduled for 11:00 a.m. had begun at 12:30 p.m. in the office of judge L. Grigoryan, and as a result the residents of # 15 Amiryan Street present at the courthouse had not been able to participate. The parties were not prepared for the court proceedings since they thought the session had been postponed. Armen Umrshatyan, the lawyer for Tornik Eva, Ltd, recognized as the third party in the case, said that he did not have papers conferring on him full powers. "I stated that since the presiding judge had said that the session would not take place, I was requesting that the court postpone the session," the lawyer said. "The court didn't accept my solicitation and Antonyan added, 'What difference does it make that I said that? I would have prepared and come.' The court decided to take a 30-minute break to give me a chance to bring my papers. Thirty minutes later we entered the judge's office and Suren Antonyan declared that the session had taken place without the parties and that the suit had been denied."

Lawyer Inessa Petrosyan told us that the residents of the building # 15 Amiryan Street had gone through a long struggle before going to the Court of Cassation and being turned down. They had compiled new evidence to present to the Court of Appeal, but were unable to participate in the court proceedings. "Disorienting lawyers by deceiving them and saying that the session was postponed, and then taking a 30-minute break and using it to get the participants out of the room, and then making a ruling, is a gross and unjustified violation of the right to a fair trial guaranteed by Article 6 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and of a number of other rights," Petrosyan said.

The lawyers believe that the newly appointed cassation judge and member of the Judiciary Council of Armenia, Suren Antonyan, could only have acted in this way if he was confident of impunity. Inessa Petrosyan maintains that the judges of the Court of Appeal violated the law under instruction from the Chaiman of the Court, Marat Katvalyan. The residents of #15 Amiryan Street had discovered that Marat Katvalyan was a close friend of R. Levazyan, who represents Tornik Eva, Ltd., and hoped, in vain as it turns out, that the chairman would not put pressure on the court.