THE PANEVEZYS CASE (ESTONIA V.

LITHUANIA)

Forum: Permanent Court of International Justice

Year: 1939

Citation: Series A/B, No. 76 (February 28, 1939)

Link to the Original Text of the Decision

The Government of Estonia filed an application with the court with a request for a judgment to declare
that Lithuania had wrongfully refused to recognise the rights of an Estonian company with respect to a
railway situated in the former Russian territory – which had now become Lithuanian, following the
independence of the Baltic Republics. It required that Lithuania make good the prejudice that the
company suffered. Estonia contended that the company in question had become the owner of the
railway, having continued, or succeeded to, a former Russian company.

Lithuania raised two preliminary objections – one being that Estonia had not observed the rule of law
that Lithuania claimed existed, to the effect that any claim made by a State must be a national claim not
only at the time of its presentation, but also at the time when the injury to which it refers was suffered;
the second objection related to the failure to exhaust national means of redress afforded by municipal
law, before taking proceedings before an international tribunal.

The court joined the objections to the merits, indicating that Lithuania’s first objection could not be
decided without ruling on the merits. Although such an objection was in principle of a preliminary
nature, the Court considered that that was not so in the present case. The grounds of the objection,
namely that the claim lacked national character, could not be separated from those on which the
Lithuanian Government disputed the company’s right to the ownership of the railway. After considering
the second objection, the Court found that it was common ground that the Estonian Company had not
instituted any legal proceedings before the Lithuanian courts in order to establish its title to the railway.
For those reasons, the Court declared that the claim presented by the Estonian Government could not
be entertained.