Point of law: whether it is a violation of antitrust legislation that the booking clerks of RZhD, alongside with selling railway tickets, were also rendering services on voluntary insurance, without receiving purchaser’s consent to such services and without explaining to him the conditions of  insurance contract and the rules of its conclusion?

Alternative attitudes: 1) in the case at hand the relevant market is the market of insurance services, and therefore only an entity having dominant position in this particular market may be held to be violating the Law “On the Protection of Competition”; RZhD, however, dominates in another market – namely, the market of railway transportation; its booking clerks were not exercising their labour duties as employees, but were acting as insurance agents whose activity is regulated by the Law “On the Protection of Consumers’ Rights”; besides, insurance agents, when acting on behalf of the insurer, have powers to agree on the termination of an insurance contract and return the insurance premium paid by the passenger; or 2) the violation was elicited in the market of services on the sale of railway tickets, where the monopolistic position of RZhD enabled it to impose another service, which was not asked for by the purchaser; in order to define RZhD’s actions as an abuse of dominant  position it would suffice to prove the fact of its dominance in the market of those services, for which consumers apply to the company, and not in the market of services, which were imposed upon them; all the same, the consequences of the abuse consist in the impingement upon passengers’ interests both in the market of railway tickets (through the increase of the price of transportation) and the insurance market.

Ratio decidendi: the second version is legally correct. The Presidium emphasized that in accordance with the civil legislation the contract of voluntary personal insurance is a public one, and for its conclusion the consent of the insurant is essential, as well as his familiarization with the conditions of the contract and the rules of its conclusion.  

Practical consequences: the Judgment does not provide for the possibility to reverse  inconsistent court decisions in earlier cases by virtue of Art 311 of the Commercial Procedure Code. Therefore, its ratio decidendi has only prospective force.