Appeal Against a Fine for a Rented Heavy Duty Vehicle
Rostransnadzor (the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Transport) stopped a tractor trailer on the road, as its overall dimensions raised concerns for the inspection. The vehicle had been leased by our client to the driver under a lease agreement. However, the driver decided not to inform about this relationship. Instead, he said that he was acting on behalf of the owner of the heavy duty vehicle.
As a result, Rostransnadzor issued a ruling on an administrative offense and a fine of RUB 400,000.
Our client only found out about the sanctions imposed after the money had disappeared from his account. Meanwhile, the deadline for appealing against the ruling had expired. Let’s have a closer look at how the owner of the vehicle could appeal against the decision and whether such an outcome of the case is possible.
Case was handled by
Rostransnadzor (the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Transport) stopped a tractor trailer on the road as its overall dimensions raised concerns on the part of the inspection. The vehicle had been leased by our client to the driver under a lease agreement. The driver did not inform the inspection about that relationship. He said that he was acting on behalf of the owner of the heavy-duty vehicle. As a result, Rostransnadzor issued a ruling on an administrative offense and imposed a fine of RUB 400,000. Our client was unavailable at that time. He found out about the imposed sanctions only after the money had disappeared from his account. The deadline for appealing against the ruling had expired. The task of the lawyers was: to appeal the decision of the inspection by referring to the inability to promptly learn about the charged administrative offense.
The complexity of the case: while the lawyers were preparing materials for the trial, the supervisory authority made an attempt to recover another RUB 800,000 from our client for evading the payment of the fine.
The lawyers proved the following:
1. The existence of lease relations between the driver and the client. The following were submitted to the court: lease, acceptance certificate, authorization to drive a vehicle.
2. The actions of the driver who claimed that he was working on behalf of the owner of the vehicle had no grounds. He had no waybills.
3. Our client could not learn about the imposed fines in time because he was on a business trip. The documents confirming this fact were submitted to the court in due course.
Eventually, the court agreed that the vehicle was indeed rented. The court dismissed the request for imposing a second fine and canceled the ruling holding the client liable.