The owner of a burnt-out warehouse in Shushary risks becoming bankrupt

Aleksandr Vanchura, a major developer, is trying to fend off court claims in the amount of 3.5 billion rubles. The losses were caused by a fire at his warehouse in Shushary, where 8 thousand tons of fish were burned.

Alexander Arbouzov, Partner of the Duvernoix Legal law firm, noted that losses are one of the most difficult items to recover. "The courts are very meticulous in their consideration, difficulties arise both in terms of proving the causal relationship between the defendant's actions and their occurrence, and regarding the amounts. Such disputes have a significant subjective component — the same amount of losses can be estimated in different ways. The issue of collecting a penalty is a little easier, but the subjective-evaluative factor in it is even stronger. The fact is that the penalty payable in case of its apparent disproportionality to the consequences of the breach of the obligation can be reduced in court. But there are no clear criteria for this “obvious disproportion” because of the variety of life situations. Accordingly, this point remains at the discretion of the court. The dispute between LLC “Rusich-Shushary” and LLC “SK Exclusive” is just that case: the court reduced the penalty four times," the lawyer says.