May 16 Out of Court cases

Lawyers of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure” won a dispute over succession in the amount of more than 34 million rubles. Before the Principal of the Bureau, the obligations of the borrower were fulfilled by its mortgagor, after which the latter applied to the bankruptcy case of the borrower with a statement on the succession of the Principal in the repaid part. The Court of First Instance satisfied the pledgor’s claims in full, not taking into account the Bureau’s arguments regarding the priority of satisfying the claims of the guarantor, according to which the debt to him can be repaid only after the full repayment of the debt to the lender. Considering the dispute again, the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal fully agreed with the position of lawyers of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure”, canceled the determination of the first instance on succession and adopted a new act, which protected the rights of the Principal by lowering the priority of the claims of the successor. The interests of the Principal were represented by Viktor Pokormyak, lawyer of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure”, and Ksenia Stikhina, senior lawyer of the Tyumen branch of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure”.

The Adler District Court of Sochi, at the second round of the case, again satisfied the administrative requirements of the bankruptcy trustee of the Bank to the Office of the Rosreestr of the Krasnodar Territory on the obligation to register ownership of the property taken by the bankruptcy trustee during the enforcement proceedings against the debtor. The interests of the bankruptcy trustee were defended by lawyers of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure”. As part of the enforcement proceedings, the bankruptcy trustee applied to the registrar with an application for state registration of rights to the debtor’s real estate, but he was refused on the basis of the existing performance restrictions on the property. The procedural roundabout, during which the registrar imposed more and more new prohibitions on the disposal of real estate, and the bankruptcy trustee had to cancel them every time, has finally ended. The court agreed with the arguments of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure” about the bad faith of the Adler department of Rosreestr, which did not properly examine the grounds for the restrictions imposed. In violation of the legislation on state registration of rights to real estate, the registrar unjustifiably refused to update information about the imposed encumbrances, shifting the obligation to independently pay off enforcement prohibitions to the bankruptcy trustee. Our position was also strengthened by the fact that the registrar ignored the interim measures issued by the court during the trial, in the form of a ban on the registrar to perform any registration actions with respect to the property. As a result of successful procedural actions of lawyers of the Bureau, the manager replenished the Bank’s bankruptcy estate in the amount of 26 million rubles and did not allow the debtor to challenge the acceptance of property on the balance sheet of the Bank. The interests of the Bank’s bankruptcy trustee in this dispute were represented by Sergey Bibikov, senior lawyer of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure”.

The Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the court of first instance to recover in favor of the Principal of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure” the debt under the lease agreement and the penalty in the amount of more than 1.5 million rubles. In their appeal, the opponents tried to significantly reduce the amount of the claimed penalty, but the lawyers of the Bureau managed to convince the court of the validity of their claims, bypassing the risks of reducing the penalty collected by the court of first instance. The interests of the Principal were represented by Dan Khorolets, lawyer of the practice of resolving economic disputes of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure”.

On the same day, Dan Khorolets won another victory in the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal, convincing the court that there were no grounds for canceling the court decision on the recovery of a debt in the amount of more than 2 million rubles in favor of the Principal of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure”. The case was interesting because in the court of first instance the procedural opponents presented forged documents allegedly confirming the transfer of the premises to the landlord ahead of the deadline established by law. After the lawyers of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure” declared that the evidence was falsified, the opponents were forced to voluntarily exclude them from the case materials. The mistake made became decisive in the session of the Court of Appeal, in which the interests of the Defendant were represented a candidate of legal sciences and a senior partner of a law firm representing the interests of the procedural opponent. Dan Khorolets, lawyer of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure”, correctly pointed out the bad faith of the opponents admitted in the court of first instance, casting doubt on all the arguments of the opposite side.

The Moscow City Court satisfied the requirements of the Principal of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure” to review the cadastral value of the real estate object and establish it at the market rate. Lawyers of the Bureau, despite the counter-arguments of government agencies, managed to prove that the established cadastral value is too high, since the cost was determined by the mass valuation method without taking into account the individual characteristics of the Principal’s object. The arguments about the discrepancy between the established values were also confirmed by the results of the forensic examination. As a result, thanks to the actions of the Bureau’s lawyers, the Principal’s tax burden has been reduced by more than 600,000 rubles a year. The interests of the Principal were represented by Ilsur Zakirov, Senior Lawyer of the practice of resolving disputes with state bodies of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure”.

The Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the Arbitration Court of the City of Moscow, which denied Mosvodokanal JSC in satisfaction of claims for the recovery of a compensation fee in the amount of 10.6 million rubles from the Principal for discharges of pollutants into wastewater. Denying Mosvodokanal to satisfy the claims and the appeal, the Court of Appeal agreed with the arguments of the lawyers of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure” about the illegality of the stated claims and the absence of a prejudice referred to by the Plaintiff, as well as about the violations of GOST requirements for the selection, storage, transportation and timing of the study of selected wastewater committed by the Plaintiff, which affect the reliability of the results of laboratory tests. The interests of the Principal were represented by Nikita Filippov, Head of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure”, and Rashid Gitinov, Head of the practice of resolving disputes with state bodies.