Leading civilists: opinions clash

The international scientific conference “Civil law of Russia: the year’s results” was held on January 24-25 under the auspices of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation. The amendments to the Civil Code, already adopted as well as not yet accounted for, were the subject of the discussion.

The leading Russian civilists, scientists, representatives of higher courts and legislative bodies came to the Conference. V.F.Yakovlev, A.L.Makovsky, E.A.Sukhanov, Y.K.Tolstoy, A.A.Ivanov, V.V.Vitriansky and A.V.Egorov, P.V.Krasheninnikov, Y.S.Liubimov gave their opinions on the changes in the Russian civil law.

During the first day, the report by Anton Ivanov, Chairman of the Higher Court of Arbitration, took everybody’s attention. The Chairman pointed out that the judges sometimes need to do an economic analysis of the law, and called upon the courts to check the conformity of their decisions to the Draft Amendments to the Civil Code. A.Ivanov mentioned important tendencies of the court practice. According to him, a redistribution of the burden of proof in corporate disputes is occurring, the ruling of transactions invalid is being limited and the practice of exaction of losses undergoes the changes to the better.

Also, Pavel Krasheninnikov, the Chairman of the State Duma Committee on civil, criminal, arbitration and procedural legislation, spoke during the first day of the Conference on the time limits for the adoption of the new blocks of amendments to the Civil Code. According to him, this long-awaited event will occur in February or March of 2013.

The second day’s main event was the speech by Professor Alexander Makovsky, who told about the controversies in the new draft of the Civil Code. According to him, the entire Russian legislation is extremely ambiguous and non-systematized.

The representatives of the HCA of Russia spoke in more detail about the novelties, which are planned to be introduced into the Code. These are the good faith principle, evasion of law and the procedure of formalizing the immovable property titles.

Lawyers of the Law Firm "YUST" – Partner Arthur Rokhlin, Associated Partner Alexander Bolomatov and Lawyer Vitaly Grebennikov participated in the discussions during the Conference.

For more detail see the portals Zakon.ru (the first and second day), Notariat.ru and the RCCA website.