Valeria Ivacheva comments for Pravo.ru: Legal bills and a car for the bankrupt: new Supreme Court cases

From 6 to 10 July, the Supreme Court will consider over 60 cases. The Chamber on Economic Disputes will distribute legal costs in a case, where courts were unable to establish the exact amount of losses. Meanwhile, judges of the Civil Cases Division will find out, whether it is possible to recover from policemen the amount of the legal bills incurred by a driver in challenging an illegal fine. And in a private individual bankruptcy case, the court will decide the fate of the car that the indebted owner is going to use to make his living.

Valeria Ivacheva, an attorney of the Art De Lex Dispute Resolution and International Arbitration Practice, believes that in resolving this issue the Chamber on Economic Disputes may overcome the formal approach taken by courts in settling such disputes. “Actually, the practice of legal costs recovery for such category of disputes is such that losses are compensated to an extent which is just an insignificant part of the claimed amount, while within the scope of consideration of claims for recovering legal costs (on the basis of the proportional approach), legal costs are recovered in favour of the guilty party for the reason that the amount of losses proved by the plaintiff is much less than the claimed one”, notes the expert.

The full version of the article is available here.