1. **Subject matter of the dispute:** The dispute concerns the legality of an order issued by the Ministry of Justice, which cancelled registration actions regarding the restoration of title to real property to a debtor in bankruptcy proceedings, as well as claims for a declaration of the non-existence of the respondent’s title to said property.
2. **Court’s reasoning:**
– The Court, citing the position of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court, departed from previous approaches regarding the impossibility of challenging orders of the Ministry of Justice within commercial proceedings, acknowledging that such a dispute is of a private-law nature and is subject to consideration within the framework of bankruptcy proceedings.
– The Supreme Court emphasized that the consideration of a complaint by the Ministry of Justice is not a purely technical procedure but requires mandatory verification of whether the contested actions actually violate the complainant’s rights.
– The Court established that the Ministry of Justice, when issuing the order, failed to verify whether the respondent who filed the complaint had an actual violated right, which is a mandatory prerequisite for initiating administrative proceedings.
– Since the respondent failed to prove that they held lawful rights to the property, and the courts of lower instances had already established the fact that the property was unlawfully alienated from the debtor’s ownership, the respondent’s complaint to the Ministry of Justice should have been left without consideration.
– The Court underscored that protection of property rights through a claim for “declaration of non-existence of title” is an effective way to eliminate legal uncertainty when another person groundlessly disputes the owner’s title.
– It was also noted that the suspension of a court decision in another case (at the time of appellate review) does not deprive the court of the opportunity to assess the legality of the Ministry of Justice’s actions, as the court decision was in effect at the time the contested order was issued.
3. **Court’s decision:** The Supreme Court dismissed the cassation appeals of the Ministry of Justice and LLC “Ukrbud Development,” upholding the decisions of the courts of lower instances, which had cancelled the order of the Ministry of Justice and declared the respondent’s title to the property as non-existent.
