They demand 23.5 million rubles from the supplier of imported auto parts Sodas for delaying the contract

The businessman filed a lawsuit against Sodas on September 19, 2023 for termination of the supply contract dated August 12, 2022 and recovery of the prepayment along with a penny of 23.5 million rubles. Sodas also decided to file a lawsuit against Bugaeva to recover €1.2 million under the supply agreement.

According to the Rusprofile service, Sodas LLC is engaged in the wholesale supply of imported car parts and oil, and IA Bugaeva, an individual entrepreneur, sells automotive products at retail.

There are no texts of the claims, so only provisional conclusions can be drawn about the relationship between the parties: the businesswoman did not receive the goods on the agreed date, but the supplier nevertheless purchased the products and demands that Bugaeva buy them again, says Andrei Misarov, president of the Moscow Bar Association “Advokat”.

The expert, commenting on the parties’ possibilities of receiving the requested quantities, recalled that to terminate the supply contract in court, the buyer’s argument about the supplier’s failure to comply with the delivery deadlines alone is not enough (clause 2 of the article 450 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation). The contract may only be modified or terminated:

1. in case of material breach of contract by the other party;
2. in other cases provided for by this Code, other laws or agreements.

According to the lawyer, if the text of the contract does not contain special conditions for its termination, then, according to the general rules of civil law, failure to meet the delivery deadline will not entail termination of the supply contract. Rather, on the contrary, the court will refuse to terminate the contract of IP Bugaeva IA

The businesswoman will have to demonstrate that failure to meet delivery deadlines caused her such damage that she largely lost what she was counting on when closing the deal, the expert said.

In addition, if the delivery time was significantly violated (the claim was filed a year after the conclusion of the supply contract), taking into account the situation with the growth of the euro, IA Bugaeva may have grounds to prove damage and terminate the contract. supply. contract.

If during the failure to meet the delivery deadline there is a significant increase in the euro exchange rate and, as a consequence, an increase in the price of the ruble, IP Bugaeva IA’s chances of winning the lawsuit increase significantly, Andrei Misarov estimated.

Pretrial resolution of collection disputes is mandatory. The party submitting a claim to the arbitration court must attach to the application evidence that it has taken steps to reach a pre-trial settlement.

Individual entrepreneur IA Bugaeva and Sodas LLC could not reach an out-of-court settlement, and the significant amount of the collected amounts and the short period of consideration of the court case allow the parties to bear the legal costs. Disputes of this type are usually considered by the arbitral court of first instance within three months, Misarov summarized.

Sodas LLC is registered in Moscow since November 10, 2021, the organization is headed by Elena Maksimkina, formerly by Dmitry Oberfeld. Revenue in 2022 amounted to 164 million rubles, profits – 2.3 million rubles, according to Rusprofile data.