Costs and expenses for the services of representatives
2015 year of the party who lost the case, there is another possibility to reduce the amount of court costs that will have to pay in favor of the procedural opponent, winning in court. This happened due to a new court practice on reimbursement of costs of the representative.
Now it may be objected to the requirement of collecting court costs for the services of a representative, if his remuneration was determined by the outcome of the litigation (the"success fee").
This legal position is set out in the definitions of Judicial Board on economic disputes of the Supreme court of the Russian Federation from February 26, 2015 No. 309-ES14-3167 and dated may 25, 2015 No. 302-КГ15-2312.
As explained by the Supreme court, reimbursement of expenses on the representative in the form of "success fee" can take place only if such remuneration was attributable to the provision of new services beyond those already accounted for in the contract.
But most often this condition is not met. As a rule, the contract with the representative puts remuneration in dependence solely on the positive outcome and does not associate it with the new services in addition to those already accounted for in the contract. According to new court practice on representative costs, such payments are not legal costs.
The Supreme court justified it by the fact that in this case, the party actually pays your agent a premium for the conduct of the case in court and the amount of such bonus is set out in the agreement of the client and the representative. However, the result of such agreement, the customer and representative may not be charged as court costs with the procedural opponent of the client. After all, this opponent is not a party to the agreement between the client and his representative.
The approach of arbitration courts for reimbursement of court costs for payment service representative now corresponds to this position of the Supreme court. The courts no longer reimburse the amount of "success fees" consisting of legal costs for payment service representative (see, for example, the decision of Arbitration court of the Moscow district from 16 June 2015 in the case № A40-66830/2013).
So, now participants of civil turnover you need to keep in mind: if the procedural opponent will claim to recover as legal costs for services of a representative amount of "success fee", you need to object to this requirement with reference to definition of Judicial Board on economic disputes of the Supreme court of the Russian Federation from February 26, 2015 No. 309-ES14-3167 and dated may 25, 2015 No. 302-КГ15-2312. We also need to explain to the court that the amount of "success fees" in principle, can not be recovered from the individual who was not a party to the agreement, the parties and her representative on payment of the last premium for the proceedings in court. It does not matter the fact that the size of the "success fee" of either the total fees of the representative within reasonable limits. Read more in the recommendations to the bankruptcy court to object to the requirement of collecting court costs, asserted in an excessive amount of.