【Winning Case】: Whether the settlement agreement with compensation content signed during the enforcement stage is actionable
Text/Wang Shaodong, Huang Yan
Case filing is refuted: The enforcement of the settlement agreement does not fall within the scope of the court's administrative litigation?
On August 27, 2018, Mr. and Mrs. Z of Yueyang Lou District, Yueyang City, Hunan Province, received the "Decision on Land Concession within a Time Limit" made by the Land Bureau of Yueyang City, ordering them to hand over their homestead house located in a village in a township in Yueyang Lou District, Yueyang City, within 5 days after receiving the decision on time limit. Mr. Z and his wife believe that their house belongs to a country house, and the decoration cost is not cheap, according to the practice of demolition of surrounding houses, they should refer to the price of surrounding commercial houses to determine the compensation standard. However, the compensation standard in Tengdi's decision is far lower than the aforementioned market price, and it is also far lower than the amount previously negotiated with the project department. This puzzled Mr. and Mrs. Z. In addition, the husband and wife did not approve of the land acquisition basis recorded in the tengdi decision, the approval of a road project land acquisition, because the project team had been talking to them according to the demolition and relocation of another road project during the relocation process, and the road project in the tengdi decision was a project in 2013 and had been completed before. Therefore, Mr. Z and his wife filed an administrative reconsideration of the timely "Decision on Time limit for land concession" and requested the Yueyang Municipal Government to revoke the aforementioned decision. In January 2019, they received a reconsideration decision from the municipality to maintain the decision to set aside the land within a limited period of time. Unsatisfied, the two continued to file a revocation lawsuit with the Yueyang Lou District People's Court. In May 2019, the Yueyang Lou District People's Court rendered a first-instance judgment, revoking the Decision on Land Concession within a Time Limit and the Administrative Reconsideration Decision made by the Yueyang Municipal Government. However, the Yueyang Municipal Land Bureau, which lost the case, was not satisfied and appealed. In August 2019, the Yueyang Intermediate People's Court rendered a second-instance judgment, which revoked the first-instance judgment and changed the judgment to a legal time limit. The issue of compensation is resolved in a separate case.
In October 2019, the Yueyang Municipal Bureau of Natural Resources and Planning (formerly the Land Bureau) issued a reminder to Mr. Z and his wife to urge them to fulfill the Decision on Land Concession within a Time Limit. In November 2019, the Yueyang Municipal Bureau of Natural Resources and Planning applied to the Yueyang Intermediate People's Court for compulsory enforcement. The Yueyang Municipal Intermediate People's Court ruled that the Yueyang Lou District People's Court reviewed the enforcement. In January 2020, the Yueyang Lou District People's Court issued an administrative ruling, allowing it to be enforced and handed over to the Yueyang Lou District People's Government for enforcement. In March 2020, the Yueyang Lou District People's Court posted the Enforcement Announcement and performed the Decision on Land Concession within a Time Limit of Three Days. At the same time, a number of eviction staff and some unidentified personnel have been working and exerting pressure on Mr. and Mrs. Z in various forms from the end of 2019 to March 2020. At the end of March, the perimeter of the house was also put on a cordon. Forced demolition has become a mountain rain that wants to come, and it has also become the last straw that crushed the psychological defense line of Mr. Z and his wife. The two signed the "Implementation Settlement Agreement" with the project department of the district government.
The amount of the settlement agreement executed is almost the same as the amount in the negotiation phase in 2018, and Mr. Z and his wife still consider it unreasonable. After waiting for the mood to calm down, the two successively reflected the situation to multiple departments at the district and municipal levels, but to no avail. The agreement seems to be a foregone conclusion.
In March 2021, Mr. and Mrs. Z entrusted Huang Yan's team of lawyers to file a lawsuit with the Yueyang Intermediate People's Court, requesting the revocation of the Enforcement Settlement Agreement. However, the court soon received the "Administrative Ruling" issued by the court not to file the case, and the court held that the "Enforcement Settlement Agreement" was an enforcement act made by the administrative organ based on the effective judgment of the people's court and did not fall within the scope of the administrative litigation of the people's court.
Second-instance judgment: The enforcement of the settlement agreement essentially belongs to the "land, housing, etc. expropriation compensation agreement" and falls within the scope of administrative litigation
Lawyer Huang Yan and Lawyer Guo Yifan, who were responsible for undertaking the case, helped Mr. Z and his wife to appeal to the Hunan Provincial High People's Court within the ten-day appeal period, and the appeal said: Judging from the content of the agreement on the implementation of the settlement agreement, it is the parties to the relocation who agree on the demolition compensation method, the total amount of compensation, the payment period, the scope of compensation, the relocation time and other demolition compensation matters, on the one hand, the demolition compensation obligation of the demolition project department and the right to obtain the demolition of the house. On the other hand, mr. and mrs. Z's obligation to vacate and deliver the house and the right to monetary compensation are determined, which is in nature a compensation agreement for land requisition and demolition. Article 2 (2) of the Provisions of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Trial of Administrative Agreement Cases of the Supreme People's Court [2019] No. 17 stipulates that "where a citizen, legal person or other organization initiates an administrative lawsuit in respect of the following administrative agreements, the people's court shall accept it in accordance with law: (2) compensation agreements for expropriation of land, houses, etc.;" Accordingly, the nature of the agreements involved in the case belongs to the collective land expropriation housing demolition compensation agreement, and it shall be determined that the dispute over the revocation of the agreement involved in the case belongs to the scope of the people's court's administrative litigation acceptance.
In June 2021, the Hunan Provincial Higher People's Court rendered a second-instance ruling, holding that the Enforcement Settlement Agreement involved in the case essentially belonged to the "Land, Housing, etc. Expropriation Compensation Agreement" referred to in Article 2 of the Provisions of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Trial of Administrative Agreement Cases, which fell within the scope of the political litigation case, and the court of first instance applied the law incorrectly, so it ruled to revoke it. After that, the Yueyang Intermediate People's Court accepted the lawsuit of Mr. Z and his wife and conducted a substantive trial.
