Brisc Legal Case Study | Lawyer in Cluj — compensation for unlawful deprivation of liberty, unjust pre-trial detention, and excessive length of criminal proceedings
The data in this material has been anonymized. References to court rulings, courts, and amounts are public and are included to illustrate the actual legal process of a case that has been finally resolved.
In Brief
A former police officer with over 25 years of service was investigated, detained, and placed in pre-trial detention as part of a large-scale organized crime investigation into organized criminal association and blackmail. After 145 days in detention and more than 5 years under a travel ban, the criminal proceedings concluded, after 11 years, with a final acquittal. We assisted the client in the civil action seeking compensation from the Romanian State for the harm suffered. The litigation went through three levels of jurisdiction — the tribunal, the court of appeal, and, finally, the High Court of Cassation and Justice — and ended with a final judgment ordering the State to pay EUR 30,000 in moral damages and RON 180,602.42 in material damages, fully recovered.
The Facts
Our client had served for nearly three decades within the police force, holding leadership positions and enjoying a solid professional reputation. In 2006, he was included in a large-scale criminal case handled by the prosecuting authorities specialized in combating organized crime, being accused of participation in an organized criminal group and of aggravated blackmail.
The investigation began with his detention for 24 hours, followed by pre-trial detention. The measure was successively extended, with the client spending 145 days in custody, under conditions that the courts later described as inadequate (lack of proper heating in winter, restricted access to sanitary facilities, unsanitary conditions). The pre-trial detention was subsequently replaced by a travel ban — a measure that was maintained for more than 5 years and 7 months, accompanied by strict obligations: periodic reporting to the court and to the police, a ban on possessing or using any weapons, and a ban on communicating, directly or indirectly, with more than 150 people involved in the case.
Due to the intense media pressure generated by the case’s notoriety, the trial was transferred to a court more than 500 kilometers from the client’s home. Over the course of 78 hearings, this required repeated travel and overnight stays in another city, with a significant impact on the client’s professional, family, and social life. During the 11 years of proceedings, both of the client’s parents fell ill and passed away shortly after his release, and he was forced to abandon a doctoral program he was in the process of completing.
The criminal proceedings concluded as follows: a first-instance court initially issued a conviction, but on appeal, the higher court partially set aside the ruling and, upon retrial, ordered the final acquittal of our client on all the charges for which he had been investigated, finding that no offense had been committed.
The Legal Approach: The Compensation Claim Against the State
Following the final acquittal, we built and pursued, on the client’s behalf, a civil action against the Romanian State, through the Ministry of Public Finance, based on:
- Article 539 et seq. of the Criminal Procedure Code — the right to compensation for unlawful deprivation of liberty during criminal proceedings;
- Article 1349 et seq. of the Civil Code — general tort liability, for harm exceeding the strict scope of the deprivation of liberty (damage to honor, reputation, and dignity resulting from the excessive media coverage of the case);
- Articles 5 and 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights — the right to liberty and security, and the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time.
We sought to have the State ordered to pay EUR 1,000,000 in moral damages, together with the litigation expenses incurred by the client during the criminal proceedings (attorney’s fees, accommodation, and travel).
First Instance — The Tribunal
The first-instance court partially upheld the claim, finding that the preventive measures imposed on a person subsequently acquitted for good were unjust, and that the length of the proceedings (11 years, 1 month, and 20 days) was unreasonable. It ordered the State to pay EUR 250,000 in moral damages and RON 207,379.7 in material damages, plus statutory interest.
Second Instance — The Court of Appeal
Both the State and the Prosecutor’s Office appealed, seeking a reduction of the compensation. The court of appeal upheld the principle of State liability — including the application of Constitutional Court Decision no. 136/2021, which extended the right to compensation to persons acquitted after being subjected to a preventive measure that later became unjust — but reassessed how the harm was to be evaluated, splitting the moral damages by separate criteria: EUR 15,000 for the unjust pre-trial detention and EUR 15,000 for the excessive length of the criminal proceedings, by reference to relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights. It upheld the material damages, but in the amount of RON 180,602.42 (attorney’s fees, accommodation, and travel over the 11 years of proceedings, proven partly by documents and partly through judicial presumptions corroborated with witness testimony).
The Appeal on Points of Law — The High Court of Cassation and Justice
Both our client and the State and Prosecutor’s Office filed appeals on points of law. We argued, among other things, that the moral damages awarded were manifestly disproportionate to the severity and length of the deprivation of liberty, while the State disputed the very basis for awarding them. By a final decision issued in April 2025, the High Court dismissed all appeals as unfounded, thereby fully upholding the court of appeal’s decision and establishing, with precedential effect, several key principles:
- an acquittal, by itself, is sufficient to justify the right to compensation of a person deprived of liberty during criminal proceedings that ended in acquittal, without the need for a separate finding that the preventive measure was unlawful;
- travel and accommodation expenses may also be proven through judicial presumptions, corroborated with indirect evidence, when full direct proof is practically impossible after more than a decade of proceedings;
- the State, as the holder of the right to bring criminal proceedings and as guarantor of the proper functioning of the public justice service, bears strict liability for the litigation expenses of a person finally acquitted, regardless of any fault on the part of the judicial authorities.
The Outcome
At the end of a legal process spanning three levels of jurisdiction, our client obtained a final and enforceable judgment ordering the Romanian State to pay EUR 30,000 in moral damages and RON 180,602.42 in material damages, plus statutory interest. The case was thus successfully closed, nearly 19 years after the start of the criminal investigation that had marked his life.
Why This Case Matters
This case confirms an essential principle that is often unknown to the general public: a person who is finally acquitted, and who was previously deprived of liberty or subjected to restrictive preventive measures, has the right to compensation from the State — even if the measure was formally lawful at the time it was imposed, with its unlawfulness arising retroactively from the acquittal itself. This right was reinforced by Constitutional Court Decision no. 136/2021 and by Decision no. 1/2023 of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, issued to unify judicial practice.
In practice, this means that many people who went through criminal proceedings that ended in acquittal — even years after those proceedings concluded — may still be entitled to seek compensation from the State for the moral and material harm suffered: for the period of detention or house arrest, for the restriction of their freedom of movement, for damage to their dignity, honor, and professional reputation, as well as for the litigation expenses advanced during their defense.
Building such a case, however, requires rigorous evidence-gathering — reconstructing the complete timeline of the preventive measures, quantifying the moral harm by reference to both domestic case law and that of the European Court of Human Rights, and proving litigation expenses accumulated, in some cases, over several years or even decades of proceedings.