Book review: Sergey Pepeliaev’s ‘Recovering costs in relation to legal assistance in the commercial courts’.

The problem of recovering money spent on legal assistance has continued to be topical for the last decade and more. Over this time, case law in relation to recovering costs on attorneys’ fees has evolved into a mainstay of case law, as opposed to the odd judicial precedent. The professional community of lawyers and attorneys is actively discussing how to develop this case law. And the release at the end of 2012 of Sergey Pepeliaev’s ‘Recovering costs in relation to legal assistance in the commercial courts’ by publishing house Alpina Publisher has given rise to a new wave of discussions.

 

“Sergey Pepeliaev’s new book is valuable not only as an academic and practical approach to solving the problem that currently exists in Russia of the unjustifiably low amount of court costs that can be recovered by a party to a dispute. The main thing, in the author’s opinion, is that the law should help to safeguard the rights of both individuals and companies: there should be fair reimbursement of costs, while the market of high-quality legal services should be accessible to all, with corruption in the resolution of disputes being eliminated at the same time. He has gone into the problem from all angles, before offering a reasonable and authoritative recommendation.

As with many of the author’s books and numerous of his articles, this work is marked by his nature as a progressor and his devotion to improving Law in Russia. The author does not prescribe ready-made solutions from developed legal systems overseas, instead striving to improve Russian law by attempting to protect the law from errors and from developing down the wrong paths.

Progressors in science-fiction literature are representatives of highly developed races, who have an obligation to promote the historical progress of civilisations which are on a lower plane of social development. The term ‘progressor’ was coined by the Strugatsky brothers and was originally used only in relation to the World of Noon. Later, Sergey Lukyanenko developed the idea of progressivism in his two-part work ‘The Stars Are Cold Toys’. Admittedly, he gave the term a completely different meaning as well as introducing a new specific term ‘regressor’, whose role included reducing the level of hostile civilisations and setting the stage for the ‘progressors’.

The book summarises the extensive experience of the author of the cases in the Russian Constitutional Court, the Russian Supreme Commercial (‘Arbitration’) Court, and the commercial (‘arbitration’) courts in relation to recovering court costs. It analyses items of legislation and case law, international experience and academic doctrines. It puts forward recommendations for a wide range of problems experienced by persons who seek to recover court costs from the arbitration courts.

This book offers help those who want to understand the nuances of the legislation on recovering court costs and the twists and turns of its development, as well as what lies behind the adoption of precedent court decisions, and the prospects for improving regulation and judicial and administrative decisions.