WALLESS Achieved Two Significant Victories in the Lithuanian Court

WALLESS prevails in multiparty litigation over the adjacent forest land owners’ pre-emptive rights.

According to the Lithuanian legislation that came into force on May 1, 2014 the land owners of the neighboring forest land have the right of first refusal to buy the land on sale. In one case the seller and the third-party buyer entered into the exchange contract which technically is not the sale and purchase agreement whereby two different land plots were swapped. WALLESS litigation team successfully argued in the court that as a matter of substance, the exchange contract was a combination of two hidden mirroring sale and purchase agreements. In another case, the seller and the third-party buyer relied on the preliminary contract allegedly entered into prior to the new legislation coming into force. WALLESS litigation team was successful proving that as a matter of fact, the date of the preliminary contract was after the legislation came into force.

The most significant achievement of WALLESS team was the implementation of the new concept in the Lithuanian legal system approved by the Court of Appeal in one of these cases that subrogation is not the exclusive remedy in this type of cases; nullity of the sale and purchase agreement is an equally permissible remedy.