The court in Lipetsk recovered from the Moscow contractor 29 million rubles for work on “Severstal”

The Arbitration Court of the Lipetsk region satisfied the claims of the Lipetsk company Refrakon Instalations to the Moscow LLC Stellar Construction. The dispute concerned arrears under the subcontract agreement for refractory works, the joint press service of the judicial system of the region reported.

As follows from the materials of the case, the parties concluded a subcontract agreement for the performance of refractory works at the Severstal facility - as part of the technical re-equipment of the heating furnace. The total value of the contract amounted to 177 million rubles. The Lipetsk company, specializing in waterproofing and refractory works, fulfilled its obligations in full and transferred acceptance certificates. The customer did not declare any objections to the volume, quality and cost, but the payment was not made in full: according to the reconciliation act, the debt reached 22.5 million rubles.

The plaintiff initially demanded to recover this amount and a penalty of 32.4 million rubles, accrued at a rate of 0.5% of the debt for each day of delay. The pre-trial claim remained unanswered, after which the company went to court.

The defendant in the revocation recognized the principal debt, but stated the disproportionateness of the penalty and applied for the application of Article 333 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. According to his calculations, 0.5% per day corresponds to 182.5% per annum, which significantly exceeds the key rate of the Bank of Russia. Countercalculations were presented in support of the position.

Having studied the materials and assessed the evidence, the court decided to recover 22.5 million rubles of principal debt and 6.5 million rubles of penalty from Stellar Construction in favor of Refracon Institutes, reducing it under Article 333 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. Penalties shall continue until the actual performance of the obligation.

The decision has not yet entered into legal force - within a month it can be appealed to the Nineteenth Arbitration Court of Appeal.