Greetings. As a lawyer with 15 years of experience, I have analyzed the Supreme Court decision you provided. Here is a detailed analysis for your material:
1. **Subject of the dispute:** Recovery from the contractor of inflation-related losses and 3% per annum accrued on the amount of an unreturned advance payment under a construction contract financed by state budget funds.
2. **Court arguments:**
– The Supreme Court emphasized that the courts of lower instances committed violations of procedural law norms, as they failed to provide a proper assessment of all arguments of the parties, in particular regarding the legal nature of obligations and the impact of supplementary agreements on the deadlines for the return of the advance payment.
– The Court stressed that only circumstances established by a court have prejudicial significance (the obligation to take into account facts from another case), and not the legal assessment provided by another court; therefore, the courts had no right to ignore new circumstances that arose after the conclusion of Supplementary Agreement No. 62.
– An important conclusion is that the courts did not clarify whether the Restoration Service performed public-authoritative functions, which is a mandatory condition for a prosecutor to represent the interests of the state in the person of legal entities.
– The Court pointed out the need to apply the rules of interpretation of legal transactions (Art. 213 of the Civil Code of Ukraine), as the literal interpretation of contract terms without taking into account the purpose and subsequent conduct of the parties led to erroneous conclusions.
– The Supreme Court noted that force majeure does not exempt a party from the performance of monetary obligations; however, the courts should have investigated whether new agreements between the parties (Supplementary Agreement No. 62) influenced the change in the deadlines for the performance of obligations, which is directly related to the emergence of the obligation to return the advance payment.
– The Court emphasized that setting out only the arguments of one party in a decision without properly refuting the arguments of the other constitutes a violation of the principle of equality of the participants in the process.
3. **Court decision:** The Supreme Court set aside the decision of the Commercial Court of Lviv Oblast and the resolution of the Western Commercial Court of Appeal, remitting the case for a new consideration to the court of first instance.
**Conclusion:** In this decision, the Court deviates from the previous position held in other Supreme Court decisions regarding the application of the provisions of Article 23 of the Law of Ukraine “On the Prosecutor’s Office” and the limits of representation by a prosecutor of the interests of the state in the person of state institutions that are not endowed with authoritative powers.
