Protection of the interests of a restaurant situated in the center of Saint Petersburg

Our firm’s customer was carrying on its restaurant business in rented nonresidential premises situated on the ground floor of a residential building in the historical center of Saint Petersburg.

Housing and Communal Services Department No. 1 for the Central Region of Saint Petersburg applied to the court seeking to oblige our customer to remove the equipment from the yard facade of the building (the exhaust pipe of the ventilation duct and the outdoor units of air conditioning equipment), as the apartment owners had not approved any decision as to the placement of the said equipment as part of the communal property. (This means the Residential Housing Code of the Russian Federation had been violated.)

No public catering establishment can work without such equipment, so should the court have sustained the claim of Housing and Communal Services Department No. 1, the restaurant would have had to be closed.

Our firm’s lawyers managed to build an evidence base to confirm that the premises owner had converted the premises and placed the equipment in question before the Residential Housing Code of the Russian Federation was enacted, and therefore no agreement from the owners had been required. The lawyers of our firm also drew the attention of the court to the fact that the claimant provided no evidence that would prove the equipment actually belonged to the claimant.

The court dismissed the claim of Housing and Communal Services Department No. 1 and the customer’s restaurant still runs its business.