ANNEN v. GERMANY – JUDGMENT 5 22. On 17 March 2008 the applicant lodged a constitutional complaint against the judgments of the Ulm Regional Court, of the Stuttgart Court of Appeal and against the decision of the Federal Court of Justice. He complained, in particular, that the impugned decisions violated his right to freedom of expression. 23. On 2 July 2009 the Federal Constitutional Court, sitting as a Committee of three judges, refused to admit the applicant’s complaint for adjudication for being inadmissible, without providing reasons (no. 1 BvR 671/08). This decision was served on the applicant’s counsel on 18 July 2009. B. Further developments 24. On 8 June 2010 the Federal Constitutional Court, sitting as a Committee of three judges, granted a further constitutional complaint of the applicant dealing with another set of proceedings before the Munich Regional Court and the Munich Court of Appeal (no. 1 BvR 1745/06). In this set of proceedings the courts had granted a civil injunction against the applicant, as the Ulm Regional Court and the Stuttgart Court of Appeal had done in the present case. They had ordered him, inter alia, to desist from disseminating leaflets similar to the ones now in dispute in the immediate vicinity of another gynaecological practice and to desist from publishing on his webpage the information that the doctor in question had performed or assisted in “unlawful” abortions. 25. The Federal Constitutional Court held that the civil injunction had violated the applicant’s right to freedom of expression as provided in Article 5 § 1 of the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) because the civil courts had not sufficiently taken into account that the doctor, who had himself publicly announced on the Internet that he performed abortions in his gynaecological practice, had not been confronted with an extensive loss of social reputation as a result of the applicant’s activities. Furthermore, it underlined that the applicant had only blamed the doctor for having carried out allegedly immoral acts, but had not reproached him for having committed acts which were subject to criminal liability or forbidden by law in a wider sense. The Federal Constitutional Court moreover insisted on the fact that the applicant had contributed to a highly controversial debate of public interest and pointed out that, against the factual background of that case, the courts had not sufficiently clarified why and to what extent the special relationship between the doctor and women searching for counselling and medical treatment in the practice might have been jeopardised.