HY RU EN
Asset 3

Loading

End of content No more pages to load

Your search did not match any articles

Sara Petrosyan

A tale of a teapot, a sugar bowl and a milk pitcher

In June 2000,Yerevan resident Ara Petrosyan gave his 1849 tea service to Suren Galoyan for silver-plating and gilding. But not only did Galoyan fail to do the work, he ruined the antique tea service. Even so Petrosyan only managed to get his things back with great difficulty. After long arguments, the sides signed an agreement according to which Galoyan was to pay $350 for the restoration of the damaged service. After disputing the agreement in all three levels of the court, Galoyan met his obligation and paid Petrosyan $350. But a year later he sued Ara Petrosyan, demanding that the second part of the agreement be fulfilled, according to which Petrosyan was supposed to return the spoiled ware - the teapot, the sugar bowl and the milk pitcher.

On April 16, 2003 the judge of the court of first instance of the Kentron and Nork-Marash districts, Edik Avetisyan, examined Suren Galoyan’s claim, and ordered Ara Petrosyan to return the teapot, the sugar bowl and the milk pitcher or to pay $395, although the plaintiff had asked only for the return of the items or their value as determined by expert appraisal-90,000 drams (about $162). Unable to comprehend either Judge Avetisyan’s desire to award Galoyan $395 rather than the $162 requested, or the fact that they had not, as respondents, been called into court, Petrosyan and his wife, Hasmik Stepanyan, decided to appeal the judge’s decision.

Ara Petrosyan informed us that it was more than a year between the time he was sued and the verdict was rendered. At the first court session, he and his wife had asked that the proceedings be postponed so that they could hire a lawyer. The judge agreed, saying that they would be kept informed about the future court date. “More than a year has passed, but we have never received a formal notice. We learned about the ruling only when legal executors came to confiscate the money,” Petrosyan told us. Meanwhile the judge stated in the verdict that he had “informed the sides, in an appropriate manner, about the date of the court proceedings.” Petrosyan told us that several summons with various dates were attached to the case, but none of them had been signed by him or his wife.

Petrosyan tried to dispute the verdict in the civil court of appeals, since he believed the court had deprived him of the opportunity to defend himself and had passed an unlawful verdict. “We proved with documents that the reason we were not present at the court proceeding was that we had not been informed in an appropriate manner about the time of the proceedings, and as a result we missed the designated deadline for appealing the verdict. We asked that our reasons for missing the deadline be considered valid, and our appeal be examined. But the court refused to accept our suit.” Petrosyan also appealed to the chairman of the Court of Cassation, asking that he consider the reasons for missing the deadline valid and review the decision of the Court of First Instance.To this the head of the administration of the Court of Cassation, Shushanik Manukyan, responded: “An appeal against a verdict or decision of the Courts of First Instance, the Economic Court, and the Courts of Appeal that have entered into legal force may be reviewed by the Court of Cassation upon an appeal brought by advocates who hold a special license and are registered with the Court of Cassation, if there are newly arisen circumstances in the case.”

This response runs counter to Clause 2 of Decision # 36 adopted by the Council of the Chairmen of the Courts on December 22, 2000, which states: “It should be clarified to the courts that while considering cases of missed deadlines for appeals, the reasons for missing the deadline must be examined in great detail. And in all cases when the deadline for the appeal was missed for reasons beyond the appellant’s control (sickness, force majeur, lack of information about the court decisions beyond his or her control, etc.) the reason for missing the deadline should be considered valid.”

The fact that the Petrosyans were not informed in advance about the court date was confirmed by HayPost, CJSC (the Armenian mail service): “Between January 1, 2003 and September 8, 2003 Hasmik Stepanyan had no registered letters except for one from Beirut (Lebanon)”.

“Why should I pay a lot of money to correct an unlawful verdict by the judge, when I should have been able to defend myself in court?” Ara Petrosyan asks.

Write a comment

If you found a typo you can notify us by selecting the text area and pressing CTRL+Enter