A detective story at the front door

The Moscow City Court has recently revoked the ruling by the Zamoskvoretsky District Court, which attracted so much attention. Andrey Sokolov, a theater and cinema actor, won the court case against his managing company last autumn. The company hired – for the residents’ money, of course – a private security agency for guarding the building, but the vigilant guards failed to prevent the robbery of over 12 million roubles’ worth of items from the actor’s flat.

A.Sokolov sued the managing company and won. But the Moscow City Court revoked that ruling, which was so important for all residents of tenement buildings. The owners of flats should understand well the essence of the whole story and to know, which services of those included in the utilities bill should be paid for or not.

Household thefts are rarely solved. But A.Sokolov was lucky – police identified the culprits, and the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow sent one of the thieves to prison for several years. But the actor did not file a claim for reimbursement of damages and compensation of moral harm against him. He addressed the claim to the managing company – Dekra-Stroyekspluatatsia CJSC. The process was especially interesting. Thefts in apartment buildings are common, and no one is safe. A.Sokolov, just like every other resident of the building, executed an agreement with the managing company and diligently paid for security in the hopes that no trespassers would access the territory. In vain. <…>

During the trial, the actor said that the guards had been reluctant to call the police long after his wife had discovered the theft. Nor had they apologized to the family. The respondent, the managing company, refused the claim right away. Its advocate said in court that neither the managing company nor the security agency were the ones who had caused damages to the Sokolovs, and that the claim had to be addressed to the thief. The defense of the managing company is convinced that only the common property of the building was to be guarded: corridors, staircases and elevators. The attorney of the private security agency, which guarded the building, agreed with the attorney. <…>

However, the district court did not agree with such construction of the far-from-cheap security agreement and ordered the utilities company to pay the actor’s damages. The company appealed to the Moscow City Court against the judgment, and the second instance court adopted a new decision – this time in the favor of the respondent managing company. The court concluded that managing companies should not be liable for thefts from apartment buildings, fully revoked the first instance ruling and dismissed A.Sokolov’s claim.

Associated Partner of the Law Firm "YUST", Advocate Alexander Bolomatov and Lawyer Maxim Smirnov represented the managing company’s interests in the second instance court. They said the following to the reporter of the “RG”:

“At the present moment, the final edition of the judgment by the Moscow City Court is still being drawn up. Therefore, one may not say for certain exactly how the instance of appeal came to the conclusion that the ruling by the Zamoskvoretsky District Court needed to be revoked. That ruling practically creates a new practice. The practice, which would fix the limits of liability of the managing organizations to the owners of flats and premises in apartment blocks in the cases of damaging or destruction of their personal property by third parties, was practically non-existent – until now.

There is a circumstance, which defined the outcome of our case in the second instance. The district court based itself on the Law “On protection of the consumer s’ rights”. The court decided that the relationship between the flat owner and the managing company is the relationship between a supplier of services and a consumer. And if damages are caused to the consumer due to insufficient quality of the service rendered, the damages done must be unconditionally compensated for by the supplier of the bad service.

The terms of the agreement between the managing company and the residential premises owners, including the Sokolovs, show that the common property of the home owners was given to the company for management. Therefore, the provisions of the consumers’ rights protection legislation may not be applied to the relationship between A.Sokolov and the managing company, since the managing company is one party, and the non-personified group of owners – their general meeting, to be precise – is the other party to that relationship. This means that the managing agreement may not be considered multilateral, where every owner is a separate party on his own behalf, and may only be bilateral.

The consumer relations obviously do not arise in such situation. Also, the managing company had no obligations to safeguard the personal property of A.Sokolov. Each owner’s personal property is not common property of the apartment building.

This means that the managing company did not undertake to safeguard the personal property of A.Sokolov, and therefore the imposition on it of the duty to compensate the damages is unfounded”.

The first ruling for similar circumstances was passed last May. Then, the Kuzminsky District Court of Moscow dismissed the claim by an owner of a flat in a residential building against the managing company, when thieves “cleaned up” his car at the building’s closed parking. The resident was unable to obtain compensation from the managing company.

All those stories are an important warning to the residents. The today’s situation is quite interesting: the managing companies charge the residents for large sums of money, including for the services of private security agencies. But nobody explains to the people, what exactly will be guarded. And no one actually reads the standard form contracts, as a rule. Security costs have reached one thousand roubles per family in regular apartment blocks. The elite residences charge the same amount per square meter – or more. The first lawsuits show that either the texts of the agreements for the PSAs’ services need changing, or guarding stairs and walls should be less expensive.

The attorney of A.Sokolov said after the judgment of the second instance had been pronounced that he was going to dispute it, even if it takes him to the Supreme Court.

Natalia Kozlova, “Rossiyskaya Gazeta”.