Our client ordered equipment from a supplier to support his production activities. The terms of the order were agreed upon by the parties through an exchange of letters and e-mail messages without drawing up a contract in the form of a single written document. The goods did not arrive within the agreed time frame, so the buyer decided to abandon the deal and demanded that the supplier return the previously paid advance payment. Since the supplier was in no hurry to return the funds, the buyer, with the assistance of our bureau, applied to the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region with the corresponding claims.
As part of the consideration of the dispute in case No. A56-31290/2024, we managed to prove the supplier’s violation of its obligations to deliver the goods and its obligation to return the unworked advance. We also drew the court’s attention to the fact that the amount of the penalty for breach of contractual obligations was agreed upon between the parties in the correspondence. Since a contract was not initially concluded between the parties and the one-time transaction was agreed upon through correspondence, then such a condition of the transaction as the amount of the penalty could also be agreed upon in the same form – through correspondence. The court agreed with our arguments and by the decision of August 26, 2024, satisfied the claims in full, including recovering the penalty in the amount agreed upon in the correspondence. The defendant did not dispute this decision, and it came into force.
