Point of law: the legality of a provision in the contract between the mobile service company and the customer (subscriber) which allows the former to recover the indebtedness of the latter by withdrawing money from another account of the same customer created under a different (analogous) contract between him and the company.
Alternative attitudes: 1) the rules of current legislation do not preclude the mobile service company from securing the obligation of the customer to pay for the services by way of inserting such provision into the contract, if the customer himself freely agrees to it; 2) the legislation does not envisage the possibility of securing client’s obligation in this way; the contract of rendering communication services is of standard form, and the client cannot exercise any influence upon its contents; the penalty provided for in the contract is a sufficient protection of the company’s interests.
Ratio decidendi: the Presidium held that the second version is legally correct.
Practical consequences: the Judgment does not say 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. It remains to be seen whether the ratio decidendi of the present judgment may be extended to cover the contracts between mobile phone companies and corporate clients which do not fall under consumer protection law.