Disturbance of possession: short deadlines for enforcement and repeated interference

In disputes concerning disturbance of possession, it is not enough merely to initiate proceedings in time and obtain a favourable court decision. The deadlines must also be observed after the decision becomes final and binding.

If the opposing party does not voluntarily comply with an order requiring restoration of the previous state of possession, enforcement proceedings must be initiated. The Civil Procedure Act prescribes a very short deadline for doing so.

Under Article 444 of the Civil Procedure Act (ZPP), the right to seek enforcement of an order requiring the performance of a specific act is lost if enforcement is not requested within 30 days after expiry of the period set by the court for performance of that act.

This is a preclusive deadline. Once it expires, enforcement can no longer be sought on the basis of that order. In other words, winning the case is not enough – the necessary steps must also be taken in time to ensure that the decision is actually enforced.

A different situation arises where the opposing party initially complies with the order, whether voluntarily or following enforcement, but later commits a new disturbance that is essentially the same as the earlier one. In that case, it is not necessarily required to commence a new civil action from the beginning.

Under Article 265 of the Enforcement Act (Ovršni zakon), where the earlier order prohibited such future conduct, the court may, on the basis of the same enforceable title, issue a new enforcement order to restore the previous state, where necessary. The court may also warn the enforcement debtor that a monetary fine may be imposed if the disturbance of possession is repeated.

In practice, this means that the fact that the opposing party complied with the order once does not mean that the entire civil proceedings must be repeated after every new breach. For example, if an order required removal of an obstacle and prohibited the same or similar disturbance in the future, and the opposing party later puts the obstacle back and thereby interferes with possession in the same manner, new enforcement may be sought on the basis of the existing decision.

It is important, however, that the new disturbance does not materially differ from the one already decided by the court and that the enforceable title contains a prohibition of such future conduct. If the new act of disturbance is materially different, the earlier order cannot automatically be relied upon; it must instead be assessed whether new proceedings for protection of possession need to be initiated.

The deadline for reacting to a repeated disturbance is also short. A motion for new enforcement on the basis of the same enforceable title may be filed within 30 days from the date on which the repeated disturbance became known, and in any event no later than one year from the repeated disturbance.

For that reason, a possession dispute should not automatically be treated as closed once the litigation has ended. It should be checked whether the opposing party has complied with what was ordered and, if so, whether the prohibition on future disturbance continues to be respected. Both non-compliance and repeated disturbance are subject to short statutory deadlines, and a delayed response may prevent effective use of the judicial protection already obtained.