3 options for court behavior when they receive cases of prosecutorial locks

We will appeal against the illegal blocking of sites throughout our vast country. In Bashkiria, we, together with Roskomsvoboda, are collaborating with Ufa lawyer Ramil Gizatullin. He shared his observations on how the Bashkir courts make decisions on blocking sites and why they do it in the woods, some by firewood.
In the course of monitoring the Internet, (this phrase is very fond of officials in filling out violations) we find publications on official website the prosecutor’s office of the Republic of Bashkortostan and the news agency Bashinform on filing applications for blocking sites containing information prohibited for distribution. The courts and the prosecutor’s office of one region issue similar decisions in similar cases, and this creates a reputation for them as unpredictable government agencies.

It is necessary to protect citizens from unscrupulous persons in the virtual space, and even in accordance with Russian legislation this can be done adequately. But along with this, I would like to have a uniform judicial practice and not allow a situation where three lawyers (for example, the prosecutor, judge and lawyer) will have four opinions on the issue of blocking one site.
Consider three options for different justification of decisions of the Bashkir courts when they receive similar statements about prosecutorial locks.

Failure to comply with pre-trial dispute resolution: reject applications

Let’s start with a file cabinet of cases of the Gafuri inter-district court of the Republic of Bashkortostan.
January 30, 2020 to court received sixteen administrative claims from the district prosecutor’s office with a request to block sites (one from the prosecutor’s office of the Aurgazinsky district and fifteen from the prosecutor’s office of the Gafuri district).
In all the applications, the state authority, the territorial subdivision of Roskomnadzor, which is obviously not a user or owner of sites containing information that is prohibited for distribution, was indicated as an administrative defendant. Making Roskomnadzor a defendant in lock cases is a legal mistake. In such cases, he may act solely as an interested person who leads single register domain names, indexes of pages of sites on the Internet and network addresses that allow you to identify sites on the Internet that contain information the distribution of which is prohibited in the Russian Federation.
It is noteworthy that in all sixteen cases the judges returned the statements due to non-compliance with the pre-trial procedure for the settlement of this category of disputes.
These court decisions have not been published, but taking into account the experience, I can assume that the statements of claim did not indicate information about the owners or users of the resources that the prosecutor’s office wanted to block. And this is a 100 percent basis for canceling a court decision. So why initially work in the basket?

Non-compliance with pre-trial dispute resolution: statements to accept

How are things like this in other courts, for example, in the Blagovar inter-district court of the Republic of Bashkortostan? From January 17, 2020 to February 28, 2020. received thirteen administrative claims (eleven from the prosecutor’s office of the Buzdyaksky district and two from the prosecutor’s office of the Blagovarsky district).
The same territorial division of Roskomnadzor was indicated as a defendant. All these statements were satisfied by the court, despite the fact that the published text of the decision in case No. 2a-270/2020 of the court shows that the pre-trial procedure for resolving the dispute and calling the owners or users of the sites was not undertaken. Why do they demand pre-trial settlement in one court and not in another?

The territorial division of Roskomnadzor is involved as an interested party: accept applications

In the Iglinsky inter-district court from March 3 to 11, 2020 was registered 32 lawsuits by the prosecutor’s office of the Nurimanovsky district on blocking sites. All of them were satisfied by the court without observing the pre-trial procedure for resolving the dispute and notifying interested parties.
Another thing is noteworthy – the territorial division of Roskomnadzor was not involved as a defendant in the first two cases, but as an interested person. At least something has been done right here.
Judicial practice and the position of representatives of the supervisory authority differs from district to district, which is unacceptable in the case of law, as it prevents the formation of a single judicial practice.
Lawyer Ramil Gizatullin emphasizes that the formation of a single judicial practice is important primarily for the state bodies themselves:

“Russian lawyer and statesman Anatoly Fedorovich Koni said at the end of the 19th century:“ The authorities cannot demand respect for the law when they themselves do not respect it … ”. I believe that the republican prosecutor’s office should study the decisions made on cases and protest against them in order to preserve their reputation. I believe that the leadership of the Republican Supreme Court and the prosecutor’s office should take real action to rectify the situation in this matter, maybe even by making guidelines on this category of cases. ”

This directly relates to the competence of law enforcers, since in the event of the annulment of a judicial act, the appellant not only restores the status quo, but also receives the right to recover the losses and expenses of the representative.
For example, this happened in the case with the statement of claim of the prosecutor of the Blagovarsky district, who, after the annulment of the judicial act, appealed the appeal. Soviet District Court. Ufa recovered from the Ministry of Finance of Russia legal costs in the amount of 10 000 rubles for the services of a representative. The amount is small, but the reputation costs for the state in this story are more significant.