First suppress the evidence, then dismiss the lawsuit? The justice system in Nymburk is terrifying

The Czech judiciary likes to swear by independence and law. There is no rule of law without independent courts. But independence is not a license for procedural arbitrariness, and the robe is not a protective cloak against criticism. The judge is not the owner of the courtroom, but the executor of public power. It must decide according to the law, on the basis of evidence and under conditions in which both sides are given a real opportunity to present their case.

And above all: judicial protection is not a favor of the state or a service provided to the citizen according to the momentary willingness of the court. It is a constitutionally guaranteed fundamental right. Article 36, paragraph 1, of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms states that everyone can claim their right in an independent and impartial court according to the established procedure. Article 37(3) of the Charter requires the equality of the parties to the proceedings and Article 38(2) guarantees everyone the right to have their case heard in their presence and to be able to comment on all the evidence presented. So it is not a procedural decoration. It is about the constitutional limits of the exercise of judicial power. If the court does not respect these guarantees, the problem is not only "improper procedural procedure". It affects the very fundamental right to judicial protection.

That is why it is worth paying attention to what is happening at the District Court in Nymburk in the civil proceedings led by judge Mgr. Jakub Fukal. Abnormal are the moments when the process begins to resemble a mechanism in which evidence is rejected, witnesses are not heard, objections disappear in reduced protocols, and in the end it is explained to the participant that he did not sufficiently prove his claim.

In the matter of the protection of the personality sp. stamp 8 C 275/2025, the protocol from August 6, 2026 contains a stern sentence: "The court notes that it will not take further evidence." Following is the instruction according to § 119a of the Code of Civil Procedure and the next proposed evidence is rejected as late. It may be legitimate in itself. However, in the same case, specific witness evidence was previously identified to demonstrate the scope, repetition and dissemination of the statements that were the subject of the lawsuit. The plaintiff suggested questioning persons from schools, the municipality, the police and OSPOD. The court accepted the amendment of the claim, so the dispute also included the alleged dissemination of defamatory statements against third parties and institutions. And then the proving closed. If the claim is subsequently dismissed with the argument that the decisive facts were not sufficiently proven, the question arises: how is the party to prove something when the court refuses to hear the people who, according to him, should have testified?

Even more telling is the treatment of the procedural space of both parties. At the hearing on June 4, 2026, the defendant's attorney was given the plaintiff's replica. He asked for time to familiarize himself and the court interrupted the proceedings. A few weeks later, the roles were reversed. The defendant's final proposal was delivered to the court on August 13, but the plaintiff actually received it immediately before the hearing on August 14. According to the plaintiff's procedural submission, in this second situation, a comparable space for studying and reacting was not provided, which, moreover, happened repeatedly. The court record specifically states that plaintiffs are being "served by a short route." Closing arguments were then made and the verdict was pronounced without interruption. Therefore, in a similar situation, one side was given space to study, the other was not before the decision. It is a specific procedural difference that deserves explanation. Equality of arms does not mean that both participants are sitting in the same room. It means that they have a comparable opportunity to react to what may influence the decision.

And then there are the logs. Documents that are supposed to be the official picture of what happened in the courtroom. In proceedings 8 C 275/2025, the protocol of August 14 ends with the sentence "Dictated aloud without objection." However, specific objections were raised against the protocol and they refer to the official audio recording, according to which the plaintiff insisted on recording his speech and did not agree to its reduction. In the objections, it is described that the procedural requirement regarding the preservation of camera and access records was reduced in the protocol to a skeleton sentence about the request "relating to the camera records of the building". According to the same objections, the audio recording should have recorded express disagreement with the incomplete protocol, yet the protocol ended with the formula "no objections". When a public document simplifies a procedural act by changing its meaning, a problem arises with the reviewability of the procedure itself.

A similar situation also appears in the second proceeding between the same participants, sp. stamp 8 C 87/2025. According to objections to the protocol, the audio recording shows that the judge specifically asked the participant if he was raising a bias objection, and the participant replied, "That's right." At the same time, the objections claim that this procedural action was not captured in the protocol and several different actions were reduced to an indefinite "request for camera records". And according to the filing, the protocol still ends with the formula "no objection", although the audio recording itself is supposed to prove otherwise. If the audio recording says something other than the log, the problem cannot be pushed to the CD in the file. It is the protocol that other courts read, and it is from it that the procedural history is reconstructed.

The course of the negotiations on August 14 seems even more absurd. According to the objections to the protocol, after the identification of those present and the notification about the making of the audio recording, the court practically immediately called those present to stand up and began to pronounce a supplementary judgment, because the judge had not dealt with everything that had been brought to his attention by the Regional Court in Prague, i.e. only with a note, and the proceedings dragged on for almost another year. Before that, the participant was not given the opportunity to make any procedural presentation. Only after the decision was announced did he ask, on the still running recording, if he could dictate something into the minutes, as he was not given the space at the start. The submission even locates this progress in time: approximately 26 seconds from the beginning of the recording, the court began to announce the addition of the decision. If the court is a place where a person is supposed to be heard, then such an image is almost grotesque: first the sentence, then the opportunity to speak.

And it is here that it becomes clear why similar situations cannot be trivialized as mere "process details". The right to be heard is part of the constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair trial. The state cannot tell a citizen: you have the right to go to court - but the court no longer has to actually hear your evidence, your objections or your statements. This would change the right to judicial protection from a substantive fundamental right to a blank ticket to the courthouse.

It is fair to add that the Regional Court in Prague decided in May 2026 that Mgr. Jakub Fukal is not excluded from discussing one of the matters. That has to be respected. But the decision not to disqualify a judge is not a certificate of procedural flawlessness for all future actions. Bias is one question, quality of management is another. Criticism of the judge is therefore not an attack on the independence of the judiciary. Quite the opposite. Independence without responsibility turns very quickly into institutional convenience.

And here we get from Nymburk to Czech justice in general. The system does not consist of abstract paragraphs; it consists of specific judges, protocols, proceedings and decisions. Every single misdemeanor can be easily downplayed. One unheard witness? Procedural discretion. One inaccurate protocol? Administrative detail. One late submission? Organizational oversight. Once there was no room for expression? After all, it was just announced. But this is how the most dangerous form of institutional failure arises: not by a big scandal, but by a series of small steps, each of which is separately labeled as insignificant.

Due process is not a collection of forms, stamps and instructions. It is the experience that the court actually hears what the participant is saying, captures his essential propositions and treats the evidence of both sides according to the same rules. Justice, which gives the impression of first closing the door of evidence and then scolding a person for not proving anything, is itself cutting a branch of public trust.

District court in Nymburk and judge Mgr. Jakub Fukal is therefore not interesting as a target of a personal campaign. They are interesting as a concrete test of whether the Czech judiciary can accept control of its own procedural procedure. Whether he can admit that the protocol may be flawed. Whether the appellate court can consider the accumulation of errors, and not dissolve each of them in isolation in the sentence "that alone is not enough". And above all, does the simple idea that a person comes to court to be heard still apply?

Because the moment decisions are made before the participant is actually heard, it is no longer just one lawsuit, one judge or one district court. It is a constitutionally guaranteed right to judicial protection - and thus trust in the rule of law itself.

Resources

1. Resolution of the Presidium of the Czech National Council No. 2/1993 Coll., on the promulgation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms as part of the constitutional order of the Czech Republic.Collection of laws of the Czech Republic  

2. Act No. 99/1963 Coll., Code of Civil Procedure, as amended.Collection of laws of the Czech Republic[

3. SUPREME ADMINISTRATIVE COURT. 2024. Decision of April 17, 2024, No. 11 Kss 5/2023-156. Brno: Supreme Administrative Court

4. CONSTITUTIONAL COURT. 2024. Finding of 15 May 2024, file no. stamp IV. ÚS 400/24. Brno: Constitutional Court

5. EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS. 2023.Janáček v. the Czech Republic, application no. 9634/17, judgment of 2 February 2023. Strasbourg: European Court of Human Rights