Success Stories: Yerevan Anti-Corruption Center helps the Citizens to win the Court Cases against “Yerevan Jur” CJSC

Ms Satenik Nazaryan and her family had left Armenia for a long time. When they returned toi the country they learned that “Yerevan Jur” CJSC had filed a claim against them in the court for the failure to pay for water supply. The Company claimed to exact 308.257 AMD debt and 6.165 AMD as the state duty.

“They say that we have not paid for the water supply, but we have paid. We have a private house and we have a faucet in the yard. We had installed the water meter devise late and they know that it is installed. They have filed a claim with a reasoning that we had not paid for the water. But we were in the RF and returned late to Armenia. And when we came we installed the water meter,” said the citizen to Iravaban.net.

The First Instance Court of General Jurisdiction of Armavir marz decided to exact 30 thousand 200 AMD from the citizen in favor of “Yerevan Jur” CJSC as a sum for the debt accumulated for the water supply and scavenging services.

“Yerevan Jur” CJSC appealed the decision, and the citizen decided to apply to Yerevan Anti-Corruption Center operated by the Armenian Young Lawyers Association NGO (AYLA). “We applied to the Anti-Corruption center. They compiled an answer with the appeal and thanks to this answer “Yerevan Jur” CJSC was unable to take a sum of 308 thousand AMD from me,” Ms Satenik said.

Miss Mariam Zadoyan, Advocate of Yerevan Anti-Corruption Center maintained this case. In the interview with Iravaban.net she said, “We mentioned in the reply that the CJSC does not prove the provided facts at all, namely there are no proofs that the citizen had used their services during the last four years, because the submitted statements do not provide opportunity to clarify it. And, in general, there are not any legal justifications, and calculation in the Company’s claim,” said the advocate.

The answer to the appeal included the circumstance that the party citing the facts bears responsibility to prove those facts. The court agreed with the answer as well. Thus the Court of Appeals decided to dismiss the complaint of “Yerevan Jur” CJSC.

According to Mariam Zadoyan such cases are frequent. “This is not the first time that we support the citizens to win the court cases against “Yerevan Jur”. Recently we helped another citizen as well. The CJSC had claimed to exact 100 thousand AMD form that citizen.” Notably according to our interlocutor the statements of the Company indicated the name and the second name of that citizen, the number of the water meter and his telephone number. Only the indicated address belonged to another person against whom the Company had filed the claim. “It turned out that all these referred to the citizen’s neighbor. However the First Instance Court had considered the case in absentia of the citizen and met the Company’s claim. However we submitted all the reasoning and again won,” Miss Zadoyan said.

Gevorg Tosunyan

Iravaban.net