News

Today the Court of Justice of the European Union has made a decision in the proceedings Šiba in answer to a request for a preliminary ruling from the Supreme Court of Lithuania whether a contract for legal services concluded by a lawyer with a natural person constitutes a consumer contract with all the related safeguards for the natural person.

‘There  is  no doubt that this decision will bring clarity in the case pending before the Supreme Court of Lithuania, the hearing of which is soon to be renewed’, noted the President of the Supreme Court of Lithuania Rimvydas Norkus when reading the decision passed by the Court of Justice.

In this decision published today, it is underlined that there is some inequality between client-consumers and lawyers owing in particular to the asymmetry of information between the parties. Lawyers display a high level of technical knowledge which consumers may not have.

It is also indicated in the decision that a lawyer who provides a legal service for a fee to a consumer is acting, within the meaning of the Directive on unfair terms in consumer contracts, as a businessman. Such a finding cannot be invalidated by the public nature of lawyers’ activities either.

The Court of Justice has made a conclusion that the guarantees provided for in the Directive should also be applicable to the terms of contracts concluded between a lawyer and a consumer which have not been individually negotiated.

In assessing the terms of such a contract, the Court has observed that national courts have to take account of the specific nature of those services and to all of the circumstances attending its conclusion. In case of doubt whether the contractual terms are plain and intelligible, national courts must interpret them in a manner most favourable to the consumer.

In the case pending before the Supreme Court of Lithuania, a lawyer requests awarding of a fee in the amount of 15,000 LTL for the legal services provided to a natural person under a contract for legal services. The defendant filed a counterclaim requesting to recognise those contracts for legal services invalid as concluded under false pretences. The defendant claimed that she received the primary legal assistance from the lawyer, which is free, while the services of the lawyer provided in the case were understood by her as a part of that free legal assistance.

For more information about the decision taken by the Court of Justice of the European Union see: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=161389&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=331426

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