Legal issue: whether courts must follow a constitutional interpretation of a legislative provision, given in a judgment of the Constitutional Court, if this interpretation was issued after the adoption by a court of first instance of a decision in the case in which such provision was subject to application, but before the consideration of the case by superior courts?

Ratio decidendi: the Constitutional Court has rejected the view of the Presidium of the Supreme Arbitrazh (Commercial) Court, under which judgements of the Constitutional Court do not have retroactive force and therefore may not apply if the proceedings in the case started before the time of its coming into force. Quite the contrary, if an appellate, cassational or supervisory court finds, when considering a case, that a lower court either applied legal provisions, which were subsequently deemed by the Constitutional court to be non-conforming to the Constitution, or applied them in an interpretation which departs from their constitutional sense as defined by the Constitutional Court, such decision should be unconditionally reversed, because courts of general jurisdiction and arbitrazh (commercial) courts may not assess the legality and justifiability of decisions adopted by the Constitutional Court, and by the same token may not avoid the implementation of prescriptions contained therein. Any other view would mean that courts may apply a normative legal act deemed to be non-conforming to the Constitution or interpret and apply it in defiance of the interpretation given by the Constitutional Court, thus assuming the role of the latter.

The contested legal provision relating to the legal force of Constitutional Court judgments was deemed to be conforming to the Constitution with due regard to the interpretation given to it by the Court.