Introduction
A former police officer and combat veteran approached Disputes Law Firm shortly after his discharge from service. Two unresolved issues had accumulated during his years on the force: the Main Directorate of the National Police had never paid him for overtime and night-shift work in his final years of service, and it had never compensated him for dozens of days of unused leave accrued years earlier, before his transfer between regional police directorates. Sorting out the case revealed that these were, in fact, two independent claims against two different authorities, each requiring a separate lawsuit. One claim was dismissed — the overtime and night-shift compensation turned out to be governed by specialized departmental rules that did not favor the client. The other was won outright in both court instances: the client was awarded compensation for 110 days of unused leave.
Background
The client, a police captain, had served with the Main Directorate of the National Police in Donetsk Oblast since 2015. In September 2022 he was transferred to the Main Directorate of the National Police in Volyn Oblast, where until 2024 he worked as a criminal investigations officer with the Lutsk District Police Department and was assigned to an enhanced duty regime — manning checkpoints and serving with an investigative task force, much of it during night hours. In 2024 he was discharged from service. It was only at that point that it became clear he had never been compensated for dozens of unused leave days accrued during his years in Donetsk Oblast, nor paid overtime and night-shift allowances for his final years of service in Volyn Oblast.
Gathering Evidence and Preparing the Claims
Because both the overtime claim and the leave compensation claim required documentary proof the client did not have on hand, the first step was to send formal attorney inquiries directly to the authorities holding the relevant records. Disputes Law Firm approached the Main Directorate of the National Police in Volyn Oblast, requesting duty schedules, payment records, and data on overtime and night-shift service. At the same time, it became apparent that the records on unused leave from earlier years were held not there, but at the Main Directorate of the National Police in Donetsk Oblast, where the client had served before his transfer — requiring a separate inquiry to that authority.
Obtaining responses to both inquiries took time: the Volyn directorate answered late and incompletely, while the Donetsk directorate issued supporting certificates only after some delay. Once the documentation for the first claim — overtime and night-shift compensation — was complete, the lawsuit was filed with the Volyn District Administrative Court (case No. 140/3718/25). Somewhat later, after receiving the leave-day certificates, a second lawsuit was prepared and filed with the Donetsk District Administrative Court, initially naming the Main Directorate of the National Police in Donetsk Oblast, the authority that held the relevant records, as defendant.
First-Instance Rulings
In the overtime and night-shift claim, the client's position rested on Article 106 of the Labor Code of Ukraine, which entitles workers to premium pay for overtime, and on Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine "On the Organization of Labor Relations under Martial Law," which permits extending the standard workweek to 60 hours for personnel engaged in critical infrastructure — a category that covered the client's checkpoint and task-force duty during martial law. The Volyn District Administrative Court, however, applied the specialized departmental rules instead: under Article 91 of the Law "On the National Police" and clause 20 of Procedure No. 260 governing police monetary allowances, officers who serve beyond the standard duty hours receive no additional pay — they receive compensatory rest time instead. This outcome reflects the general principle governing conflicts between legal norms: a specialized rule that directly regulates police monetary allowances takes precedence over general labor-law provisions. The claim was dismissed in full.
In the leave compensation case, the court first addressed the question of the proper defendant. Since it was the Main Directorate of the National Police in Volyn Oblast — the authority that had actually discharged the client — that bore responsibility for the full final settlement upon discharge, the court substituted it for the Donetsk directorate, which had merely held the records. The Donetsk District Administrative Court then granted the claim in full, holding that: a police officer's right to compensation for unused leave is not limited to the year of discharge and extends to all prior years of service; a former employer's failure to transfer complete records does not relieve the new employer of its obligation to pay compensation; and a dispute over such payment is treated as a wage dispute and is not subject to any limitation period. The client was awarded compensation for 110 days of unused annual, additional, and combat-veteran leave accrued in 2015, 2016, 2020, and 2021.
Appeal
The Main Directorate of the National Police in Volyn Oblast appealed the ruling, arguing that the volume of unused leave had never been recorded in the client's transfer order and that it therefore could not have known about it. The First Administrative Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and upheld the first-instance ruling in full, confirming that the obligation to pay compensation rests with the authority that carried out the discharge, regardless of how complete the records passed on by the previous employer were. The court also awarded the client his legal costs for the appellate proceedings.
Legal Significance and Conclusions
From the outset, this matter was handled as two distinct strategies, each calibrated to a different legal regime. Overtime and night-shift compensation for police officers falls under specialized departmental regulation that, as a rule, excludes monetary pay where compensatory rest time is provided instead — and the court's application of those rules rather than the general provisions of the Labor Code was a predictable consequence of how Ukrainian law resolves conflicts between specialized and general norms, not a weakness in the client's position. The right to compensation for unused leave, by contrast, carries no such limitation: it is unconditional, regardless of how long ago the days accrued or how much information the previous employer passed on to the new one. Separating these two claims at the outset — identifying the correct defendant and the correct legal basis for each — made it possible to carry the claim with genuine legal merit through to full recovery: compensation for 110 days of unused leave, upheld in both court instances.
