B. C. Toms & Co, a multinational law firm of Western and Ukrainian lawyers, was, in September 1991, the first foreign law firm to open a Kyiv office. Our Kyiv office is ranked by the independent KyivPost legal directory as one of the several leading law firms in Ukraine. Our foreign and Ukrainian lawyers have excellent qualifications from leading law schools and many years of practice experience.
Our commitment to the success of our clients is the cornerstone of our litigation and arbitration practice. We have over 28 years of experience obtaining successful results for our clients in Ukrainian court and administrative proceedings as well as in foreign and Ukrainian arbitration tribunals.
Our Litigation and Arbitration Practice Group has successfully handled many of the most significant lawsuits and arbitrations in Ukraine, including for example:
(1) Successfully handling the appeal in 2008 to the High Commercial Court on behalf of a joint venture (the “JV”) of two major international investment funds to obtain a reversal of the decisions of the Kyiv Oblast Commercial Court and the Kyiv Oblast Appellate Court in order to recover for the JV its USD 25 million land site for its USD 330 million office and shopping center development; in this case, the High Commercial Court not only reversed the lower courts, but it also exercised its discretion to award judgment in favour of the JV, rather than to send the case back to the lower courts for further proceedings, so the JV could then immediately restart its project (the High Commercial Court’s judgment in this case affirmed several new principles of Ukrainian law that help protect all other real estate projects in Ukraine from unjustified attack).
(2) Acting for a foreign investor in a number of related lawsuits to successfully recover a multi-million dollar investment in the OJSC Kyiv Sewing Factory case that was improperly dispossessed, including its significant real estate located in the centre of Kyiv, resulting in our client fully recovering its investment and taking control of real property worth over USD 50 million;
(3) Successfully representing the Ukrainian subsidiary of a western oil and gas company to eliminate tax and related claims exceeding USD 20 million, resulting in the maintenance of control by this western company over its Ukrainian subsidiary;
(4) Acting for a large European multinational company for its Ukrainian litigation and Swiss arbitration in a dispute over a Ukrainian company’s multi-million dollar contract claims concerning a joint-venture, resulting in the Ukrainian litigation being dropped and the British company making a multi-million dollar payment to our client to settle its counter-claims;
(5) Advising an important British aviation leasing company on the Ukrainian law aspects for lawsuits in Canada and Belgium to obtain the release of arrested Ukrainian aircraft;
(6) Successfully representing a western fund in the Supreme Court of Ukraine to obtain the dismissal of a substantial claim by the former director of their Ukrainian subsidiary, whom they had dismissed without notice for theft and other grossly improper behavior;
(7) Successfully representing the Ukrainian subsidiary of a multinational agro-chemical company in six tax disputes initiated by the Ukrainian State Tax Administration, including to completely prevail in all six cases on their appeal to the Supreme Court of Ukraine; and
(8) Successfully acting for a multinational oil and gas company in a major arbitration to recover USD 144 million in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in respect of an improper corporate raid.