TIME MATTERS. WHY DO COURTS REDUCE THE COSTS OF REPRESENTATIVES

Calculating the amount of court costs appearing in the definitions of arbitration judges is not such an easy task as it may seem at first glance. In practice, judges can reduce the amount of recoverable costs of participants in the process for representatives for various reasons. Not always among them may be the complexity of the case or the price of the claim. At the same time, the short time of court sessions can affect the reduction of such costs.

Portal pravo.ru I drew attention to several interesting cases in which judges issued appropriate verdicts (collected court costs or lawyers' fees in court) in October 2022. In total, for this purpose, the authors of the publication studied 21,698 court documents related to this problem.

In case no. A50-9205/2020, the judge of the Perm Arbitration Court, Yulia Sultanova, considered the issue of compensation for the expenses of the company "Bona Fide Builders" for the services of lawyer Anna Tyutikova. The firm requested 700 thousand rubles from the court, but the judge decided to cut costs almost twice to 400 thousand.

Formally, the court relied on the absence of indications of the cost of some lawyer's services in the contract. In particular, the cost of drafting procedural documents (petitions, statements) and payment for participation in the court session was not spelled out. The plaintiff decided that the case was complicated, which means that there is a rule to increase the payment by 50%. In addition, the company focused on the minimum rates of legal services in the Perm Region.

However, the court considered that the indicated rates were only a non–binding recommendation. A significant amount of claims (more than 1 million rubles) does not affect the complexity of litigation. At the same time, despite Tyutikova's direct participation in all 17 court sessions, the time spent on the process was insignificant. 9 meetings lasted no more than 20 minutes, and some lasted a little more than a couple of minutes. At the same time, no more than one hour was spent on any of the meetings.

In another case (no. A56-17480/2021), the costs of legal representation services were reduced by 11 times. Of the 5.5 million rubles requested by the company "Singer" to pay for the legal services of AB "Main Letter". The defendant ("Bookstore No. 1"), whom the representatives of the law firm managed to evict from the "Singer House" in St. Petersburg, pointed to the affiliation of the parties, which the judge considered insignificant for establishing the fact of rendering and paying for services.

At the same time, the amount of the collected payment of expenses was reduced to 500 thousand. Instead of 2.7 million for representation in the court of first instance, the amount of 300 thousand was determined, and instead of 1.8 million and 1 million in appeal and in cassation for compensation, the amounts of 100 thousand were determined.

Photo: Freepik