Points of law: 1) whether findings having pre-judicial significance should be set out in the reasoned part of court decision or only in the resolutive one? 2) how the burden of proof should be apportioned by a court if there are reasons to believe that a party to the dispute, an offshore company, abuses the law – namely, it hides its affiliation with a party to an earlier dispute having pre-judicial significance, with the purpose of overcoming pre-judicial effect of the previous decision by appearing as a new party in the later dispute on the same issues.
Ratio decidendi: 1) facts established by the court in the reasoned part of a decision may also have pre-judicial significance; 2) as a result of non-transparent structure of shareholding in offshore company the proving of facts, on which the judicial protection of rights of third persons depends, is considerably impeded because of special rules on the disclosure of information regarding the beneficiaries of offshore companies. Therefore, the burden of proving of the presence or absence of circumstances protecting the offshore company as an independent subject in its relations with third persons should be placed upon the offshore company. Such proving is exercised, first of all, by way of disclosing the information as to who actually stands behind the company, that is, by way of disclosing information on its ultimate beneficial owner. If there is such an affiliation between the offshore company and party to a dispute having prejudicial significance, the submission of new evidence, as well as the initiation of a new process in a court of law must be regarded as an abuse of procedural rights on the part of the company. Such behavior constitutes the use of legal entity for the purposes of abuse of law, that is, it is in contradiction with the real purpose of the concept of legal entity, and the related interests are not subject to judicial protection.
Practical consequences: the Judgment says that prior court decisions in analogous cases if inconsistent with this interpretation may be reversed in the procedure and within the limits envisaged by Art 311 of the Commercial Procedure Code.
