1. The subject of the dispute is the legality of collecting average monetary allowance from a military unit for the period of delay in final settlement upon a serviceman’s discharge, and the determination of the amount of such compensation.
2. The court of cassation indicated that the lower courts erroneously assumed that, following the amendments to Article 117 of the Labor Code of Ukraine (Law No. 2352-IX), the criteria of proportionality and commensurability of compensation no longer apply. The Supreme Court emphasized that even with the legislator establishing a six-month limitation on the payment period, the compensatory nature of this sanction remains. The Court departed from the previous position of the Administrative Cassation Court (in particular, set forth in case No. 440/6856/22) and upheld the legal position of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court, according to which courts are obliged to assess the proportionality of the compensation amount to the size of the principal debt. Since the courts of first and appellate instances did not establish the total amount of due payments and did not apply the formula for proportional reduction of liability, the decisions were deemed premature. The Supreme Court stressed that the amount of compensation must be directly proportional to the share of unpaid amounts, rather than being automatically collected in full.
3. The Supreme Court overturned the decisions of the lower courts and remanded the case to the court of first instance for a new trial to properly establish the circumstances and recalculate the compensation amount, taking into account the criteria of proportionality.
