MOSCOW, April 11 - RAPSI. The Moscow District Federal Commercial Court has submitted for reconsideration the Rusal Sayanogorsk Aluminium Smelters lawsuit to recover $859,260 in losses from RusHydro after a hydropower plant accident.
An accident occurred at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant on August 17, 2009, when Turbine 2 broke apart. The turbine hall and engine room were flooded. Three turbines were destroyed and the other turbines were damaged. The plant consequently ceased operating.
The accident caused a power outage at the Sayanogorsk and Khakassky aluminium smelters, which resulted in the multi-million ruble losses sustained by the plants.
The Rusal Sayanogorsk Aluminium Smelter sustained a 25 million ruble ($843,570) loss. The smelters filed a lawsuit against RusHydro to compensate for the losses.
On Wednesday, the court examined RusHydro's appeal against the Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals decision satisfying Rusal's lawsuit in December.
Following the consideration of the appeal, the Moscow District Federal Commercial Court dismissed the decision of the appellate instance and submitted the dispute for reconsideration.
The motives of the move are yet unclear, as only the operative part of the cassation instances resolution is ready at the moment.
This will be the third circle of proceedings as part of the lawsuit since the Moscow District Federal Commercial Court submitted the case for reconsideration last August. The court found that the lower court wrongfully defined the cause-and-effect relations between the defendants actions and the incurred expenses and that it also did not examine the issue on the validity of the losses amount.
RusHydro is Russia's largest power generating company comprising 60 renewable energy plants, including the Sayano-Shushenskaya plant, which is presently under repair.
Rusal is the world's leading aluminum manufacturer. It occupies 10 percent of the global aluminum and alumina markets. About 76,000 people work for the company. Rusal operates in 19 countries on five continents. The company mostly sells its products in Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea.
