Background
In the late 1990s the DMD Group was involved in an important legal claim against other companies, worth almost three million euros. The defending companies were suspected of manipulating at least one public officer to avoid paying their debts.
At first the claim succeeded in the Slovakian courts. However, suddenly the president of the district court arranged for the case to come to him. On the very same day he ordered that the claim should fail, in a decision which was only two pages long and which could not be appealed.
The DMD Group believed that the judge had deliberately taken over the case, so that he could arrange for it to fail. The judge had an almost unlimited power to distribute cases as he wished, without having to give any reasons. He had singled out the DMD Group case to be heard by himself, and dismissed it in an abrupt decision.