Failure to Comply with Sanitary Conditions at a Construction Site Leads to Administrative Liability
- 2022-04-11
By a decision of the Yerevan City Municipality, the Plaintiff was subjected to administrative responsibility under the first part of Article 157.15 of the Administrative Offenses Code of Armenia, with a fine of 100,000 AMD, for failing to ensure the sanitary conditions at the construction site, and for not properly erecting a temporary fence to demarcate the construction site intended for residential buildings.
According to the Yerevan City Municipality, the fact of the violation was substantiated by a photograph taken at the time of discovering the violation.
After reviewing the case materials, the Court concluded that the administrative authority that conducted the proceedings did not obtain any evidence that would substantiate whether the sanitary conditions had been maintained or not at the construction sites being developed by the Plaintiff. Furthermore, there was no evidence in the administrative materials to indicate that the authority had made any efforts to clarify the matter or take any measures to confirm or deny the Plaintiff's compliance with the sanitary requirements.
At the same time, the Court correctly noted that the Plaintiff was held administratively liable solely for not organizing the temporary fence demarcating the construction site properly. However, the objective side of the administrative violation, as stipulated in the applicable legal provision, involves the simultaneous presence of violations concerning both the demarcation of construction sites and the failure to ensure sanitary conditions.
Further, regarding the proportionality of the fine imposed on the Plaintiff, the Court, based on legal precedents from the Court of Cassation regarding the discretionary powers of public and local self-government bodies, found that the legality of the penalty imposed on the Plaintiff had not been properly substantiated.
As a result, the Court concluded that the claim was well-founded and should be upheld.
Notice:
The ruling of the Administrative Court of Armenia in the case VD/10207/05/19 has entered into legal force.