Currency fall is not hardship is Russia

Several days ago the Supreme Court of Russia issues its first quarterly review of its most important decisions, which had been made recently (Russian text is available on the official web site). The eighth judgment was about whether a plummeting fall of Russian currency because of Crimea crisis could be considered as hardship and thus led to conversion of a loan contract. The Court unsurprisingly gave a negative answer, confirming general reluctance to use ‘rebus sic stantibus’ doctrine. However some remarks in the ruling seem to leave a door open to use this clause as a ground for contract modification…

Constitutional Court Decision to protect infringers

On the 13th of December 2016 the Constitutional Court of Russia made important decision on authors, patent and trademark law aiming to protect infringers whose punishment might be too severe according to existing rules. Russian Ministry of Justice have already made a proposal for amendments…

A further step to electronic litigation

Due to some amendments and new acts as well as some improvements in the court system Internet site it is now possible to bring an action on-line not only in an Arbitrage court (which is mainly for business claims) but in General Jurisdictions courts also (which is for non-business disputes). An electronic action should be signed be an electronic signature, which can be made within 2 days for about 2000 rubles (something like $40), so it undoubtfully simplifies getting court protection for a broken right for anyone suing more than once. Although there are some weird soft bugs (for instance, nowadays the system accepts only PDF documents which have been previously printed and then scanned), they tend to be solved and anyway it solves a lot of time for lawyers and businesses.

The privacy and the law of proof

An audio of a conversation between parties to a contract can undoubtedly be a proof in a litigation amid them but does it matter whether both parties knew it was recorded? 

The official service for power of attorney verification

On the 1^st of January 2017 the amendments to the law on powers of attorney were enacted for greater protection to any third parties relying on these documents. It made the Russian Notary Chamber create and run the Internet site to let anyone check validity of the document. The service seems to be extremely useful thinking of simplicity of forgery of any kinds of written documents nowadays.

Introduction

Hello!

Here I am, setting up a new blog on Russian private law. Despite some political tensions between my country and the Western world as well as some (unfortunately traditional) economical turbulence I do believe that there are lots of people who think about doing business in Russia. Higher risks are often compensated with higher profits so with a little bit of luck and some knowledge in the law everything can start working well for you! Surprisingly I didn't find any regularly updated blog or site on the topic so I decided to fill the gap on my own.