Supreme Court heeded position of Legal Alliance

A ruling of the Cassation Administrative Court within the Supreme Court of Ukraine was handed down in a dispute on the extortion of ordinary registered shares held in adverse possession that has been expropriated without the consent and knowledge of Legal Alliance's client.

Attorneys-at-law of Legal Alliance were able to prove in the Supreme Court that the trial and appellate courts when considering the case, did not conduct a fully, complete and objective examination of all the circumstances of the case and the available evidence. In particular, the courts circumvented the requirements of the procedural law regarding the standard of proof of "credibility of evidence" under economic procedures and instead erroneously applied the provisions of the previous version of the procedural law on sufficiency of evidence.

Now the case has been referred back to the court of first instance, which is to consider the dispute in the light of the Supreme Court's instructions.

A team composed of Legal Alliance's counsel Vitalii Savchuk and attorney-at-law Anastasia Hrachova worked on the cassation appeal.

"The credibility of evidence is a concept that was introduced in the law more recently. It means the court must evaluate the evidence of each party in their totality, so to speak, compare them, and from that, respective, decide whose arguments prevail. I am pleased that this concept did not remain mere ink on paper, since it does facilitate adversarial process of the parties," Vitalii Savchuk said.