In the ruling of December 17, 2019 in case no. 826/5331/18, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court stated that the requirements for the subject of power to respond to a lawyer's request for information having public signs were considered in the administrative procedure. Therefore, a claim for inactivity of the information manager in considering the request for information in view of the provisions of Law No. 2939-VI must be filed to the administrative court.

It should be noted that the Court of Appeal in the consideration of this dispute referred to the previously stated legal position of the Grand Chamber (in the decision of January 16, 2019 in case No. 686/23317/13-a), according to which the dispute about not answering the lawyer's requests is not subject to consideration in the order administrative proceedings. However, the GCh has now found such arguments unjustified.

The GCh explained its position by saying that in the present case the legal relations were different from the legal relations in that case, because the lawyer's request there was directed to control the execution of the court decision in a civil case. In the instant case, the plaintiff requested the authority to provide him with public information in the form of duly authenticated copies of the documents.

We would like to remind you that the jurisdiction of administrative courts extends to public-law disputes, including disputes of natural or legal persons with the subject of power over appeal of its decisions (normative legal acts or individual acts), actions or omissions, except when for consideration of such disputes the law establishes a different procedure for judicial proceedings.

In the first and third paragraphs of Article 23 of Law No. 2939-VI, the decisions, actions or omissions of the information managers may be first appealed to the head of the manager, a higher body or a court. The requester shall have the right to appeal, in particular, the refusal to satisfy the request for information; failure to respond to a request for information. Appeals against decisions, actions or omissions of information providers to court shall be appealed in accordance with the CAJ.

Thus, under the first, second, fifth, and sixth paragraphs of Article 5 of the CAJ, every person has the right, according to the procedure established by this Code, to appeal to the administrative court if he considers that the decision, action or inaction of the subject of power has violated his rights, freedom or legitimate interests, and request their protection by:

1) recognition of a legal act and its separate provisions as unlawful and invalid;

2) recognition as unlawful and cancellation of an individual act or its separate provisions;

3) recognition of the actions of the subject of authority by unlawful and obligation to refrain from committing certain actions;

4) recognition of the inactivity of the subject of the power of authority unlawful and obligation to take certain actions;

5) establishing the presence or absence of competence (powers) of the subject of power;

6) the adoption by the court of one of the decisions referred to in paragraphs 1 - 4 of this part and the recovery from the defendant - the subject of powers of power for compensation of damage caused by its unlawful decisions, acts or omissions.