District court resolved time zones issue when filing insolvency petition

The Arbitration Court of the Urals District considered the case on the complaint of the creditor, whose application was left without consideration by the lower instances.  The question concerned the bankruptcy claim of the debtor, which was filed in one time zone, but accepted by the system in another.

Initially, the creditor, in compliance with the law, published a statement of intention to drive the debtor to bankruptcy in the Unified Federal Register of Bankruptcy Information. This was done on the morning of December 30th. Then, on the night of January 14-15 (Ural time) or late in the evening of January 14 (Moscow time), the creditor filed his claim through the ‘My Arbitrator’ system. It was registered by the system on January 15th.

The courts of the first and appeal instances, leaving the application without consideration, considered that it should have been filed as early as January 15 Moscow time, which meant that the creditor filed it a few hours earlier than it was necessary.

However, having considered the circumstances of the case, the District Court came to a different conclusion.

The board noted that, as a general rule, the date and time of the information system (Moscow time) is considered the time of submission of documents through the electronic system, but not the time zone in which the recipient is located.

However, in the case under consideration, the debtor, the creditor and the court were at the same time zone (Ural time), and the time difference with Moscow was only 2 hours and was assessed by the court as insignificant. In addition, the interests of other creditors were not affected by the earlier filing of the application, since the next of them apply to the court only on January 16. Now the court of first instance will have to reconsider the case taking into account the mistakes made (decision № F09-5480 / 21 of August 13, 2021 in case No. A76-800 / 2021).