News

Immediately after the acceptance of St. Petersburg Government’s resolutions regulating parking in St. Petersburg, it was clear that they contain a number of provisions that are contrary to regional and in some cases to federal law. That became the basis for Kirill Saskov, Partner, Head of Corporate and Dispute Resolution Practice of Kachkin & Partners, who lives in the pilot zone of paid parking, to file a lawsuit in court seeking to contest a number of norms of St. Petersburg Government Resolution «On the order of payment for the use of parking».

Over the past year Saskov’s lawsuit has consistently been considered by St. Petersburg City Court, and on February 3d, 2016 – by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

Despite the fact that Saskov’s requirements satisfaction was formally refused in both instances, it is notable that right before the meeting in St. Petersburg City Court changes to the contested resolutions were adopted by St. Petersburg Government, and a number of applicant’s disputed provisions were eliminated. Then the situation repeated itself: the day before the proceedings in the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation St. Petersburg Government adopted the next changes to the regulation of paid parking lots, and as a result a significant number of comments that had become the basis of Saskov’s lawsuit were taken into consideration.

In particular, the latest changes finally abolished the absurd rule prohibiting the parking use for further three months since the date of penalties repayment for the parking rules violation; an excessive demand for SNILS when submitting the application for issuing a parking permit was fixed; contradictions within the calculation of parking sessions time, which could lead to payment for the period of time when  a vehicle doesn’t occupy a parking space, were eliminated; the possibility of depriving a citizen of the parking permit without notification was excluded, etc.

«I am satisfied with the result. Winning the case was never the aim, since the main reason was the desire to eliminate the obvious unfair and incorrect position of the regulation affecting a significant number of citizens. Unfortunately the current standard-setting process does not provide for real involvement of population or at least professional legal community into «polishing» the language of regulations, and as a result the rule-making technique suffers. Using the lawsuit to stimulate public authorities’ common sense proved to be an effective way, and the willingness of the profile committee members to see their mistakes and make efforts to remove them pleased me», — said Kirill Saskov.

Reference

Since 2015 a system of paid parking has been launched in St. Petersburg. In spite of a sufficient number of positive aspects of this change for the city, the Resolution «On the order of payment for the use of a fee-based parking …» prepared by the Government of St. Petersburg required serious revision.

This was the reason for Kirill Saskov’s application to St. Petersburg City Court to contest this document. He acted as an interested person since certain provisions of the Regulation violated his legal rights and freedoms, namely as of a person living in a paid parking zone and a member of a large family.