Branch falls on a car: over UAH 414,000 recovered from a municipal enterprise

The client’s problem

On 5 February 2020, a driver stopped his car near a building on a street in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi District and stayed inside. A branch from a tree growing along the roadway fell onto the car. The vehicle was mechanically damaged and had to be towed away. The trees in the district are the responsibility of a municipal green-space maintenance enterprise.

What we did

• On behalf of the car owner and the driver, we filed a claim against the municipal enterprise for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage.
• We supported the amount of the loss with an automotive technical report, and the weather at the time with a reply from the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Centre: there had been no precipitation that day.

Outcome

By a judgment of 27 September 2021, the Sviatoshynskyi District Court of Kyiv partly allowed the claim and ordered the enterprise to pay UAH 406,816.82 in pecuniary damage, UAH 1,200 in towing costs, UAH 5,000 in non-pecuniary damage and UAH 1,765.15 for the technical report, plus UAH 26,500 in legal costs and the court fee. By a ruling of 9 February 2022, the Kyiv Court of Appeal dismissed the enterprise’s appeal and upheld the judgment. The ruling is not subject to cassation appeal.