Attorneys-at-law Justas Čobotas and Vytautas Kaklys successfully represented the client, a leading water management company in Lithuania, in the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania.

The ruling of the court: Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania upheld the client’s claim to annul the order of the Minister of the Environment imposing a fine of over 4 million EUR and returned the issue to the Ministry of the Environment for re-evaluation.

Brief summary of the case: the client was imposed a fine for not connecting households to the water supply and sewage networks. When determining the size of the fine, only a narrow list of factors fixed by a specific document issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was followed. We proved in the court that this list of factors cannot be considered finite and exhaustive. The court found that every factor, which affected the non-connection of households to the networks, must be taken into account. We successfully proved that all relevant factual circumstances must be taken into account when establishing the infringement and imposing the fine.

We are glad that through joint efforts with the client we managed to prove the illegality of the fine imposed to the client.

With years of experience in protecting the interests of public entities, state and municipal companies, we are happy to contribute to society and public interest.