“Unusual Methods of Proof in Court: How Lawyers Got Creative in Proceedings and Won Cases” — an article by Magomed Aydemirov for the “Corporate Lawyer” journal
In the article: experiences of lawyers who managed to convey their position to the court using unconventional methods.
When standard evidence is insufficient, one has to look for unconventional ways to present their position to the court. Attorneys and in-house lawyers shared with the editorial team stories where creative evidence helped them outmaneuver their opponents in complex cases — from identifying the author of an anonymous complaint in procurement to proving the absence of delivery despite the counterparty possessing all primary documents.
Proved Intentional Blocking of a Client at Auction with the Help of a Telecom Operator
Magomed Aydemirov, lawyer at Prime Advice Saint-Petersburg Law Firm:
Our firm represented an entrepreneur in a dispute challenging the results of an electronic auction for the sale of a land plot. He was actively bidding, but in the midst of the auction, he encountered technical problems: access to the electronic trading platform (ETP) website was lost, although other websites worked as usual.
The client changed internet connections, but the pattern repeated: after changing providers, access would briefly appear, and then be cut off again. Changing the connection provided a new IP and a temporary "window of opportunity," which would then close again. When he finally managed to access the platform, the auction had already ended with another participant winning: a plot with a market value of about 200 million rubles was purchased for approximately 11 million rubles. Someone was purposefully blocking our client: as soon as the electronic platform identified his IP address, access was immediately terminated.