Lawyer on business reputation protection cases: success of claims depends on expertise

The outcome of court cases on the protection of honor, dignity and business reputation against public officials depends on a thorough legal strategy and evidence base, including expert evidence. Vitaliy Serdyuk, attorney at law, senior partner at AVER LEX, said this in an exclusive commentary to UNN.

It all depends on the legal position in the case. Firstly, it depends on the form and content of the words used by the public servant, whether or not they lead to a violation of business reputation, and whether there was any intent in such actions. And secondly, on the chosen method of defense and the counter-evidence collected, namely the results of the examinations conducted in the case, in particular linguistic examination,

According to him, this category of cases is complicated, especially when they end up in court. After all, the question arises as to whether the words stated were value judgments and for what purpose such statements were disseminated.

The lawyer noted that the court practice in business reputation cases varies. "We see many cases when the courts actually satisfy the claims, and you can see this in high-profile political cases, or when the courts do not rule in favor of the plaintiffs," Serdyuk added.

Context

Viktor Polishchuk, a Ukrainian businessman and owner of the Gulliver shopping and entertainment and business center in Kyiv, filed a lawsuit against the ARMA to protect his honor, dignity and business reputation with the Shevchenkivskyi District Court. In a commentary to UNN, the businessman explainedthat he was forced to go to court because of Elena Duma's statement that he and his wife had "close relations with the Kremlin elite." Polishchuk emphasized that this information was fictitious and untrue.

In response to a request from UNN , ARMA head Olena Duma explainedthat she accused Polishchuk and his wife of having ties to the "Kremlin elite" because she saw such information in the media.

The court will consider Polishchuk's lawsuit against the ARMA on October 10.

Add

Having researched the topic, we found out that the information that Viktor Polishchuk's wife Lilia Rizva is allegedly the niece of the wife of Russian politician Dmitry Medvedev appeared in 2015-2016. It was spread by the then-incumbent MP Pavlo Rizanenko in his blogs, but he never provided evidence of this information. UNN asked Rizanenko to provide documents that would confirm his assumptions, but he refused to comment, citing the fact that he has not been a public figure since 2019.