Delayed developments, reimbursements, lawsuits. Legal representation in local courts

At any point in time, a developer or a building company may reach a stage where it cannot achieve its promised goals; at the same time any investor/buyer, who is the non-breaching party, may see no other solution than going to court. Such scenario happens on many occasions, for example:
  • Unmet expectations (related to deadlines or quality of the building works)
  • Ommision by the developers/builders
  • Miscommunications or 'over'-advertising
  • Gross negligence ( neglect of duty)
  • Breach of contract
  • Deterioration of their financial status and leading into bankruptcy or liquidation procedures
  • Fraudulent acts and torts
The approach may differ according to the specificity of the issues, but the overall solution will inevitably include one of the following activities:

A. Out-of-court settlement and preparation of a lawsuit and the related statement of claim:

Lack of successful communication between contracting parties often leads to lawsuits filed in court. In some situations, these cases may still be resolved through the process of out-of-court settlement or mediation with the assistance of a qualified business law company. Mediation can cut costs of a future court case and should always be considered as first option even though the simple negotiations did not produce satisfactory results. Meanwhile, if this stage did not give any positive results the collected papers, documents, evidence, the exchanged pre-lawsuit correspondence will serve as preparation for the second stage.

B. Lawsuit related to property issues:

Entering civil case: The main idea of filing a lawsuit is to come up with a clear court observed and monitored resolution for a conflict that usually will lead to restitution of the initial property investment for the plaintiff. In civil litigation procedure, a lawyer also plays major role in resolving a case. This goes with the belief that legal challenges need legal experts; especially, in business disputes, wherein several intricate laws may apply. Hiring a competent legal counsel will ensure that all legal rights are properly protected and observed. The few options for and during law suit related to property investments:
  1. Claiming money back (capital plus interests, plus lawyer's fees and plus court taxes and expenses)
  2. Claiming title deed in your names and getting possession - basically this is pursuing your real rights on the property which initially you have signed for, only in the cases where the certificate for lack of burdens on this property is available.
  3. Insolvency procedure and usage of the bankruptcy estate for refunding the initial investment, where the claimant is to be subrogated to the rights of creditor of the bankrupted developer.
Provisional measures - Freesing of assets owned by the developer:

The main goal of each court case is to ensure actual refund of your investment, incl. compensation/ penalty. On this matter, the only guarantee to ensure financial outcome from eventual successful court case, is namely the performance of the additional claim for freezing of assets owned by the other party, for the term of the case. This is why hiring us will benefit you - we will investigate if there are any available assets of the developer - mostly immovable assets, because it is quite sure that if they have reached this stage to be in non-performance to you, not to have any available cash in their bank accounts. Same replies for eventual mortgages - unfortunately it is common practice for local evelopers to secure off-plan developments with huge mortgage in favor of banks, and at the end of the day to abandon everything and to vanish with the cash they have initially collected. Once we have found available assets we will advise you on the chances of successful and actual financial refund and upon your decision we will proceed ahead with claiming for freezing. Please note that sometimes, in order to approve the freezing, the local judge on their own incretion (basically in cases where the claimed amount is high or the proofs are not strong enough) may request a refundable deposit for the term of the court case, usually at the amount of 5-10% of the claimed amount, to be deposited by the claimant (not to us) directly into the bank account of the related court. The standard procedure is that no matter of the outcome of the case, after issuing the court decision the claimant may get their refundable deposit back. Unfortuanately we can not be certain if they will require refundable deposit in your case too - we repeat this is decision to be taken on the judge's sole incretion.

There are two variations for it, which we can perform:

1) Applying for freezing of assets prior to entering the civil claim. We need to conclude on the base of the practice of local courts that it is unusual for the judge to allow the 1st option - freezing of assets before entering civil claim, in favor of foreign claimants (presumably on the base of lack of local address of th claimants, where the other party could eventual point reconvention / counter claim, if the initial claimants freeze assets but later they do not enter their claim).

2) A claim for provisional measures, called in Bulgaria "a claim for establishing burdens" through already entered civil case. Here the chances for you to get approval by the judge to freeze assets, are bigger, because the judge already has an entered claim with all the proofs to examine, as well paid court tax of 4% which facts clearly show your intention to pursue protection of your investment. If the claim is reasonable and the proofs are strong enough, the usual result is to receive approval for freezing of assets, where we actually register the freezing of assets at the Land registry agency of behalf of the client.

The result of our job is that the claimant becomes officially privileged creditor on the frozen asset (property) even in cases of insolvency, bankruptcy and liquidation his rights will be established.

Legal Protection in existing civil cases: You should contact our lawyers immediately in cases where somebody is suing you and you need legal protection. A professional Bulgarian lawyer will examine the case in details, collect all the paperwork, prepare and use legal instruments - regress claim, reconvention, etc. - and participate on your behalf on the hearings.

C. Execution procedure against assets owned by the other party in order to get your money back (Step-by-step service and stage payment available):

The procedure is usually based on the positive court decision in your favor and its purpose is to actually collect the money claimed initially, in order to be reimbursed to you. It is conducted by a specially designated execution judge, in which procedure legal representation is possible - the guidance and advice of a legal professional is highly advisable in order all the accompanying procedures to be followed correctly. We are capable to represent you in this procedure, including to guide the execution judge about which exact tangible assets to use for re-sale on public auction; to speed up the process in order to ensure quick refund, etc.

We can give you a simple advice / guidelines on which option to choose or profound legal assistance on any stage to achieve your goals in order a positive solution