CCPR/C/130/D/2780/2016 authors produce no evidence of an attack on their honour or on the reputation they enjoy in their village. 5.8 The State party maintains that the claim of a violation of the right to a fair trial and the right to the enforcement of a court decision has not been considered under a domestic procedure of settlement and that domestic remedies have therefore not been exhausted. 26 5.9 The authors believe that their right to a fair trial was violated because of the “lack of impartiality” of the judge of the Draguignan court and they complain that the proceedings were excessively lengthy. The State party submits that the mere fact that the judge in question had rendered several decisions unfavourable to the authors before handing down the judgment of 11 September 1998 is in no way sufficient to establish the alleged lack of objective impartiality. They do not indicate why this judge might have wanted to disadvantage them and they have not shown that this judge had any interest in Crédit foncier de France. The authors should have petitioned for his removal. In fact, it is the judge’s reasoning itself that the authors are contesting. However, a mistake of law, assuming that such a mistake has been made, does not in itself imply that the judge who makes it lacks impartiality. The authors do not show or even claim that, in the proceedings before the Court of Cassation, they invoked the partiality of the judgment of 11 September 1998. In any event, the judgment of 11 September 1998 was overturned by the Court of Cassation’s judgment of 21 September 2000 for a completely different reason – namely, a failure to respect the norms governing the adversarial justice system. The authors cannot claim that a decision overturned by the domestic courts violates the provisions of the Covenant. 5.10 The authors maintain that both the Draguignan court, in its judgment of 24 February 2012, and the Court of Cassation, in its judgment of 11 July 2013, committed an “obvious error”. According to the State party, the authors requested the nullification of the proceedings because the possible hearing of 30 July 2004 had been postponed to 24 September 2004, which is not permitted under judicial precedents. It is apparent from the judgment that was criticized that the authors, arguing that the possible hearing had not been held on the scheduled date, had requested that the foreclosure and the other proceedings against them be declared null and void. The record of the hearing of 30 July 2004 shows that this possible hearing was held and that it was postponed only once. The authors’ claim was therefore irresponsible, as was found by the Court of Cassation on 11 July 2013. The State party submits that failure to hold the possible hearing on the scheduled date is not, in the absence of challenges to successive decisions to postpone the hearing, a reason to request the reversal of a judgment involving an adjudication of the claims. The authors do not show in any way how the decisions they have criticized are vitiated by a mistake of law or manifest error. The aim of their criticism is, in reality, simply to call into question the legitimacy of an adjudicated matter they cannot pursue any further. 5.11 The State party, referring to the excessive length of the proceedings, points out that the reasonableness of the length of judicial proceedings should be assessed on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the complexity of the case, the conduct of the respondent and the way in which the administrative and judicial authorities have handled the case. The authors argue that the litigation began in 1987 and ended with the Court of Cassation’s decision of 11 July 2013, of which they are critical.27 According to the State party, the authors’ arguments that the proceedings for foreclosure on their property lasted 26 years are unfounded. Between 1987 and 2013, a very large number of proceedings were initiated by or against the authors, and only two of them relate specifically to the seizure of their property: the first foreclosure proceedings initiated by Crédit foncier de France in April 1998, which ended with the decision of the Court of Cassation in September 2000 to declare the first auction order null and void, and the second such proceedings, which were initiated by the Compagnie de financement foncier, to which the rights of Crédit foncier de France had been transferred, in May 2004 and lasted until 11 July 2013, when the Court of Cassation rendered the judgment the authors have found fault with. The length of the two proceedings that the authors have criticized was clearly justified, particularly in view of the possibilities of appeal that they 26 27 8 See Deperraz and Delieutraz v. France (CCPR/C/83/D/1118/2002) and European Court of Human Rights, Mifsud v. France (application No. 57220/00), decision on admissibility, 11 September 2002. See Cedeño v. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (CCPR/C/106/D/1940/2010). GE.21-01892