The client of our bureau – a company registered under the laws of Kazakhstan, applied to a Kazakh carrier with a request for the carriage of goods from the territory of Kazakhstan to a warehouse located in the territory of Russia. The carrier received an advance payment from our client, accepted the cargo and transported it to the border, but the cargo did not pass customs control, and the cargo returned. The customer asked the carrier to return the unused advance, which he was refused, since the carrier believed that the fault for not passing customs lies with the customer and is related to their goods.
To protect the interests of the client, we applied to the Specialized Inter-District Economic Court of the Aktobe Region with a claim against the carrier for the recovery of the unused advance. During the consideration of the dispute in case No. 1513-23-00-2/2488, the carrier did not admit guilt. By filing another lawsuit in a parallel court process, it tried to invalidate the act that confirmed the fact of non-performance of the transportation services ordered from it by our client, and to recover damages from the customer.
We drew the attention of the Kazakhstan court to the fact that the transportation contract is executed at the time of delivery of the goods to the destination, cannot be executed halfway, this is the interest of the parties when entering into transportation relations, and the defendant’s objections about the client’s guilt do not correspond to the nature of the claims for the recovery of the unworked advance, when resolving which, according to the requirements of Kazakhstan’s legislation, the guilt in the non-fulfillment of the obligation is not established. The court, by a decision of December 26, 2023, fully satisfied the claim of our client, including the recovery of penalties.
The carrier’s attempt to prove the guilt of our client and recover damages from it in a parallel process was also unsuccessful. In the same Specialized Inter-District Economic Court of the Aktobe Region on February 9, 2024, the carrier’s claim for the invalidity of the act of non-provision of services and for the recovery from the customer of additional expenses that the carrier allegedly incurred due to the return of the truck after the refusal to pass through customs control was denied. We substantiated before the court the impossibility of filing claims to invalidate acts on the provision or non-provision of services, and also pointed out that with the violation by the carrier of its civil law obligations established in the first case, it cannot, due to the rules of prejudice, claim the guilt of the customer.
We managed to uphold both decisions in the court of appeal, they came into legal force, and the carrier paid our client the funds recovered from it by the court.
