PROBLEMS OF INSURANCE DISPUTES BETWEEN LEGAL ENTITIES

In judicial practice regarding insurance disputes, there are quite often situations when courts of general jurisdiction refuse to open proceedings, referring to the fact that insurance disputes between legal entities are supposed to be considered according to the rules of commercial litigation.

However, the fact that the parties to an insurance dispute are legal entities does not mean that the cases should be considered according to the rules of commercial litigation.

Based on the opinion of some representatives of the judiciary, it can be seen that if the parties to the dispute are legal entities, then it is necessarily an economic legal relationship, despite the fact that the subject of the dispute is precisely a civil legal relationship, since the recovery of the amount of funds for an insurance case has nothing to do with conducting economic activity and related circumstances.

Let us consider as an example the case of a traffic accident, namely the situation when it is necessary to recover the damages caused by a traffic accident where the owner of the car is a legal entity and the driver was an employee who is not the owner of the car involved in the traffic accident, but from another the party insurance company, which must compensate for losses in accordance with its obligations.

As mentioned above, in such situations, individual representatives of the judiciary, namely courts of general jurisdiction, quite often refuse to open proceedings, referring to economic legal relations and the following legal framework.

For the most part, the courts refer to the provisions of Article 2 of the Economic Code of Ukraine, which defines that economic entities are participants in economic relations.
And also to the provisions of clause 15 of part 1 of article 20 of the Economic Procedure Code of Ukraine, where it is determined that economic courts consider cases in disputes arising in connection with the implementation of economic activity.

In addition, the courts of general jurisdiction in the specified category of cases refer to part 1 of Article 19 of the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine, where it is determined that courts consider cases arising from civil legal relations in the order of civil proceedings, except for cases that are considered in the order of other proceedings .

Thus, on the one hand, the courts of general jurisdiction refuse to open proceedings, citing the legal framework, contradicting themselves. So courts of general jurisdiction, when refusing to open proceedings in cases in the field of insurance compensation where legal entities appear on both sides, note that these cases are considered by commercial courts, and commercial courts consider cases in disputes that arise in connection with the implementation of economic activities.

And at the same time, they refer to the provisions of the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine, noting that courts consider cases arising from civil legal relations in the manner of civil proceedings.

Here it is worth considering the very definition of civil legal relations. Civil legal relations are property and personal non-property relations regulated by the rules of civil law, based on the free will of property-separated, legally equal participants.

Thus, if you have been refused the opening of proceedings in a similar case, you should not file a lawsuit again with the commercial court, but should turn to the court of appeal.