The Samara Regional Arbitration Court has begun to consider Laguna LLC's claim against the city administration's Department of Finance and the mayor’s office for over 2.4 billion rubles of losses, as stated in the arbitration case file.
The claim amount comprises 433.9 million rubles for actual damage and over 1.9 billion rubles for lost profits, as well as the state fee. The company's claims are due to the inability to build housing in the forest park, and the specific plots of land affected are within certain streets in the Kirov region.
The Samara administration disagrees with Laguna LLC's claims and plans to challenge them in court, citing that all decisions made regarding the park since December 2018 were influenced by the opinion of Samara residents, who wanted the park preserved as a green zone.
Initially, a group of residents from the Promyshlenny and Kirovsky districts expressed concern about the park's fate when construction was attempted and trees were being cut down, prompting public outcry and media attention, according to the mayor’s office.
The Samara administration previously conducted a public poll on the park's future development, where about five thousand citizens participated and 90% voted to preserve the park. As a result, the Master Plan and the Building and Land Use Rules were amended, changing the zoning of Laguna LLC's land from development to natural landscapes, and the park was included in the existing forest park green belt around Samara, preventing uncontrolled tree felling.
“We believe that the decision, formed in dialogue with residents and for residents, should not lead to the fact that the city budget, which is formed, among other things, from taxpayers’ funds, will incur costs in an amount commensurate with the annual budget for road repairs,” they emphasize at city hall.
• According to SPARK-Interfax, LLC Laguna was registered in October 2013. The authorized capital of the company is 1 million rubles. The director of the company is Sergey Kalinin, the founders are Hasmik Ayvazyan, Valeria Kovalenko and COUNTRY CLUB LLC.
Previously, representatives of the company have repeatedly tried to achieve development and start it on the territory of this park. So, in May 2021, the arbitration court first allowed the use of these plots for the placement of shops and multi-storey residential buildings, invalidating the refusal of the regional Rosreestr in state cadastral registration and state registration of rights to these lands. However, the appeal soon canceled this decision – it also stood in the Arbitration Court of the Volga District. As a result, the company was unable to achieve state cadastral registration and registration of rights to land for shops and residential construction.
The territory of the park was supposed to be developed back in 2017, but the work was postponed. In December 2018, the Department of Urban Planning of Samara allowed Stroyresurs LLC to prepare documents for the planning of this territory for development with capital construction projects. However, local activists opposed this and insisted on maintaining the green zone.
According to Marina Zhirova, a partner at the Yablokov and Partners Law Office, Candidate of Law Sciences, judicial practice shows that the recovery of damages is often associated with significant difficulties for the plaintiff: “In order to prove real damage, the plaintiff must provide reliable documented evidence that he has incurred or should incur costs as a result of the violation of his rights and that this is due precisely to unlawful actions / inaction on the part of the defendant. He must prove the guilt of the administration in violating its obligations and the causal relationship between the actions / inaction of the mayor’s office and the consequences.”
The expert emphasizes that if the real damage in practice is still possible to recover in the presence of the specified evidence, then it is more difficult to prove the lost profit. In addition, Marina Zhirova notes that “in general, the judicial system of the Russian Federation is quite loyal to the bodies associated with the budget and budget money.”
