According to it, the claim of the plaintiff RA against the defendant – Kaunas City Municipality – regarding recognition as a family member (the third person, this woman’s daughter VA) had to be satisfied. In turn, the municipality, which filed a counterclaim against both residents for damages, sought to evict them with all their belongings from the 5-room apartment.
Half a year later, this civil case was examined in the written procedure at the Kaunas District Court session, as the Kaunas City Municipality filed an appeal against the decision of the Kaunas District Court.
Lived in an apartment since birth, but…
First of all, it is necessary to emphasize that the 5-room apartment, whose legal residents wanted to be two women – a mother and a daughter, belongs to Kaunas City Municipality by right of ownership as a possible rental for residents, but not social housing. It means that after it is released, the apartment can be sold by public auction.
Since neither the names of the persons nor the address of the real estate are published in the court order, we can only guess that this spacious apartment is probably not somewhere in Petrašiūnai, but in the city center or closer to it. And this means that the apartment can be desirable, but not cheap, the object of the auction, as long as it is held publicly.
The plaintiff RA asked the court to recognize her as a member of the family of the deceased RP (her brother), to oblige the defendant Kaunas City Municipality to enter into a lease agreement with her for living space – a 5-room apartment.
The woman explained that she has been living in the apartment, which was given to her father back in 1953, since birth. Parents raised three children. After the death of the parents and one of their daughters, the apartment rental agreement was concluded in 2015 with R P. (the plaintiff’s brother). The sister (plaintiff) is not mentioned in the contract. According to her, the brother was addicted to alcohol and suffered from mental illness. Communication with him was problematic, so the sister, who “managed a joint farm”, had to take on the burden of both her brother and the house.
“His illness and alcohol addiction progressed. The plaintiff bought food, cooked, cleaned rooms, and did laundry. The brother did not work due to his deteriorating health, received an allowance, sometimes contributed money to food, but in practice the plaintiff kept the apartment. Together with his brother, he bought household items, did repairs, and ate together.
The brother basically lived in one room and the plaintiff in the others. In 2015, the brother informed the plaintiff that he had entered into a lease agreement with the municipality and said that the plaintiff could continue to live peacefully in the same house”, this quote is from the court decision (rekvisitai.vz.lt).
The woman stated that while living with her daughter in the apartment rented in her brother’s name, she pays taxes, performed and continues to perform the duties of a tenant after her brother’s death. However, although she continued to pay rent to the municipality in 2020, the plaintiff and her daughter were still evicted from the disputed housing without prior notice.
The plaintiff works, has no financial difficulties, her monthly income is about 2,000 euros, so she can pay both rent and utility bills. The indebtedness, which was requested to be awarded by the municipality, was caused by the fact that it refused to conclude a 5-room apartment rental agreement with the plaintiff and does not send her invoices. The woman acknowledges the debt and is ready to pay it, because in fact she would have used…
The arguments are not in favor of the applicant for a spacious apartment
Since in this civil case no absolute grounds for the invalidity of the appealed first instance court decision were established, the appellate court checked the legality and reasonableness of the appealed court decision based on the legally significant arguments of the Kaunas City Municipality’s appeal.
The court of first instance evaluated the bailiff’s 2021 in favor of the plaintiff. March 25 protocol of ascertainment of factual circumstances. It records that a little earlier, on February 24, at 11:50 a.m. household items, furniture, a 100-euro note on the cupboard, clothes, a Lenovo laptop were found in the disputed apartment. (…) Receipts submitted by the plaintiff for the heating of the apartment and other communal services, the testimony of the witness JBR, the contract with the heat energy supplier regarding the payment of part of the energy provided to the apartment were accepted as evidence.
However, already this year, the panel of judges of the appellate court, which delved into this case, admitted that it could not agree with the evaluation of the evidence made by the first instance court.
According to the decision made by the panel of the Kaunas District Court, “the first thing to be discussed is the evidence presented by the plaintiff – receipts for payment for the services used in the apartment. Payments were made at “Maximos” and “Perlo” terminals, it is not possible to determine from the receipts whose funds the services were paid for.
From the 2020 submitted by the plaintiff March – 2023 records of electricity and gas consumption in February (already after the death of the main tenant) show that the electricity consumption in the apartment (data not published) was declared very low – in 2020. in March – 30 kW/h, in April – 17 kw/h, later – 3–5 kw/h per month, a similar amount was declared for gas consumption.
Such a low consumption of electricity allows us to draw the opposite conclusion than what the court of first instance made – that after the death of RP, the plaintiff did not actually live in the apartment, because the consumption of electricity is close to zero. It can be concluded that the plaintiff only formally declared a few kilowatt-hours of electricity and a similar amount of gas”.
At the court hearing held in March last year, the witness JBR (invited by the deceased tenant’s sister) stated that he is a “long-time colleague of the plaintiff, at her invitation he went to the apartment several times for coffee, he could not tell which apartment number, which house number, he saw the plaintiff’s brother, who was disheveled, disheveled, looked at his brother.”
In the assessment of the court panel, “these witness statements do not confirm the claimant’s permanent residence in the disputed apartment. In addition, the testimony of a witness as a co-worker of the plaintiff should be considered less reliable than, for example, the testimony of neighbors living in the disputed house”.
Was the municipal apartment the woman’s only place of residence?
The woman fighting for the 5-room apartment stated both in the lawsuit and in the response to the appeal of the city municipality to the Kaunas District Court that she has lived in the apartment since birth and had no other place of residence. But the panel of judges noted that significantly more evidence collected in the case allows for the conclusion that the plaintiff was not a member of the deceased RP’s family, did not share a household with him, and did not live in the disputed apartment.
“The court of first instance writes in paragraph 15 of its decision: there is no data in the case that the plaintiff had another place of residence. This is clearly contrary to the evidence presented in this case. In 2006, from the district court of the city of Kaunas presented in this case. March 29 decision in the civil case shows that in 1992 February 28 a 1-room apartment was allocated to the plaintiff’s family. The court also found that before receiving the apartment, in 1992 February 24 the plaintiff submitted an obligation to vacate the apartment to the KN apartment management service.
in 1992 May 28 the apartment was privatized in the name of the plaintiff’s husband RA. Later, the plaintiff divorced RA in 2001. December 22 By the decision of the district court of the city of Kaunas, the property of spouses A. was divided, the plaintiff was awarded ½ part of the residential house and the already mentioned apartment.
In addition, the plaintiff, at her request, was placed in the part of the house awarded to her. Also, in the already mentioned case of Kaunas City District Court in 2006. March 29 by the decision, the plaintiff was evicted from the contested apartment, indicating that she has the right of ownership of the apartment (…). In addition, the plaintiff in 2010 March 17 bought a 3-room, 63 sq. m. m. area apartment.
During the hearing of this case, the plaintiff did not hide the fact that she bought an apartment. However, she said that she bought this apartment for her daughter so that the latter could prepare lessons there, and in her response to the appeal she already stated that the apartment was not bought by her, but by her daughter, who was not in Lithuania at the time of purchase, so the plaintiff bought the apartment in her own name.
Considering that the plaintiff’s daughter was born in 1992, both of the plaintiff’s versions seem unconvincing: at the time of the purchase of the apartment, the plaintiff’s daughter was 18 years old, so she no longer needed such an apartment to prepare for classes. The fact that the plaintiff’s daughter, who turned 18, already had the funds to buy a 3-room apartment and had gone abroad at the time of the purchase, was also not proven.
Moreover, the plaintiff in this case filed the lawsuit in 2021. on December 28, having owned the apartment at that time, and only in 2022. May 25 gave the apartment to his daughter.
Therefore, contrary to what the court of first instance stated, the plaintiff had the ownership right even to several residential premises. The fact that the plaintiff does not have ownership rights to residential premises at the time of the court decision can be considered the plaintiff’s own choice, perhaps a strategy for the conduct of this case, because she was not obliged to conclude property transfer, let alone gift, transactions.”
Quoting such a rather long excerpt from the ruling of the Kaunas District Court in this article was necessary only for the sake of accuracy in the story, which testifies how it can be aimed to take advantage of the good of all our taxpayers. That is, municipal property, which is rented cheaper than the market only under certain circumstances. More precisely, for those who really have nowhere to live and lack the funds to buy their own home or rent a living space at the market price.
The court did not help prevent the eviction
The panel of judges decided that the court of first instance justified the counterclaim, but it should be qualified differently. Because in this case, the plaintiff together with the defendant’s daughter caused 6353 EUR damage to the defendant (municipality) by not vacating the apartment, not notifying the death of the main tenant. And later – by changing the locks of the apartment, which prevented the legal owner of the apartment from entering the premises and inspecting them.
The court recognized that “these actions of the plaintiff were illegal, as a result of which the owner of the apartment suffered losses (there is a causal connection between the actions and the damage suffered). Together with the plaintiff, the defendant VA, who is an adult, performed these actions.
She could also make decisions to vacate the apartment, notify the death of the main tenant, etc. It is not possible to separate the responsibility between the plaintiff and her daughter, it was done jointly, therefore the decision to jointly and severally award VA 6353 Eur from the plaintiff and the defendant should be left unchanged, only the reasons should be changed to compensation for damages”.
This was stated by the panel of judges of the Civil Cases Department of the Kaunas District Court, which annulled the 2023 decision of the Kaunas District Court. September 18 court decision and made a new decision. The panel’s decision was made after establishing that the plaintiff occupied the disputed apartment without a legal basis, that she was not a member of RP’s family, did not share a household with him, and had not lived in the disputed apartment since 2010 at the latest.
It was decided to award a debt of EUR 6,353 (six thousand three hundred and fifty-three euros) to the municipality of Kaunas city municipality jointly and severally from RA and VA. Also, each of them was awarded EUR 11.20 for the costs of serving procedural documents to the state.
According to the decision of the district court, which came into force on the day of its adoption, the city municipality is obliged to evict the defendants from the apartment, over which the dispute continued for several years. Evict with all belongings without providing another living space.
By the way, the municipality did not provide data on litigation costs to the aforementioned court. The other side of the dispute over the spacious apartment submitted, but the court decided that the legal costs incurred by them were not reimbursable.
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