Published on 7 April 2025
 
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 54736/21
Dumitru MINEA
against Romania
lodged on 29 October 2021
communicated on 18 March 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
At the time of the impugned events the applicant was a math teacher and was in his last year of employment prior to retirement. The application concerns the dismissal by a final judgment of the Bucharest Court of Appeal of 6 April 2021 (served on 16 September 2021) of a tort law action brought by the applicant against the parents of one of his students. The student’s parents had allegedly repeatedly offended the applicant or had accused him of bullying their son and of undermining his trust in him publicly, either on Facebook or during a parent-teacher meeting attended by all the students in the class and by their parents. The incidents in question were the result of repeated disagreements between the applicant and that student’s parents about the student’s academic performance. Relying expressly on Article 6 of the Convention and in substance on Article 8 the applicant complained about a violation of his rights to respect for private life, honour and reputation because the domestic courts had assessed the circumstances of the case wrongly and had failed to strike a fair balance between the opposing interests at stake.
 
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1.  Has there been an interference with the applicant’s right to respect for private life within the meaning of Article 8 § 1 of the Convention having regard to the statements of the student’s parents in question?
 
2.  If so, was that interference justified under Article 8 § 2 of the Convention? In particular, did the domestic judicial authorities adequately balance, in the light of the criteria established in the Court’s case-law, the applicant’s right to respect for his private life and the defendants’ right to freedom of expression (see Axel Springer AG v. Germany [GC], no. 39954/08, §§ 83-84, 7 February 2012, and Jalbă v. Romania, no. 43912/10, §§ 27-31, 18 February 2014)?