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Significant Matters
HAVEL & PARTNERS provided comprehensive advice on the settlement of disputes over the “ŠKODA” sign
15. 4. 2021
A partner at HAVEL & PARTNERS, František Korbel, acting as a legal representative for the telecommunications company České Radiokomunikace a.s., succeeded before the Czech Constitutional Court in appealing against a Supreme Court resolution in a dispute over the removal of the Petrov TV translator station. The law firm has thus made a significant contribution to an important precedent in the field of telecommunications structures, which increases legal certainty for all telecommunications network operators, but also, in a broader sense, for other owners and operators of technical infrastructure network lines.
České Radiokomunikace appealed through HAVEL & PARTNERS to the Supreme Court against the verdicts of the District and Regional Courts, which ruled in the dispute over the removal of the TV translator station involving a lawsuit lodged by the owner of the land on which the structure is placed. The specialist litigation team, including partner František Korbel, counsel Jiří Kmec and senior associate Martin Šlampa, has repeatedly argued in the courts that the structure cannot be removed because of the existence of a statutory easement.
However, in its ruling, the Supreme Court made the creation of a historical statutory easement under the 1964 Telecommunications Act conditional on proof that at the time when the telecommunications structure was built the then communications operator had informed the landowner that it would start exercising its statutory right by installing the station on the concerned plot of land.
With the help of HAVEL & PARTNERS’ lawyers, České Radiokomunikace appealed to the Constitutional Court against this decision. The Constitutional Court upheld the complaint and overturned the verdict of the Supreme, Regional and District Courts. Moreover, the ruling of the Constitutional Court came to the clear conclusion that the easement for the telecommunications structure was created directly ex lege under the Telecommunications Act, without there being any further conditions.
HAVEL & PARTNERS has thus achieved a major success, significantly setting the trend in the courts’ decision-making practice in other similar disputes in the field of telecommunications and statutory easements.
