How Disputes Law Firm Unblocked a Company's Liquidation Despite a Wage-Recovery Lawsuit Filed Against It

A lawsuit for roughly forty-one thousand hryvnias was never about recovering money — its purpose was to block the company's liquidation indefinitely. The scheme rested on a simple fact: a liquidation cannot be completed while an unpaid wage debt exists, and the claimant kept that debt unpayable by refusing both to provide payment details and to submit the writ of execution for enforcement. Disputes Law Firm removed the foundation of the entire scheme with a single, procedurally flawless step.

The Core of the Case

The Khadzhybeiskyi District Court of Odesa received a lawsuit from the former director of a company undergoing liquidation, seeking recovery of sums allegedly left unpaid upon his dismissal: wages, severance pay, compensation for unused vacation, average earnings for the period of delayed settlement, and compensation for lost income — approximately 41,600 hryvnias in total. At the same time, the claimant filed a motion to secure the claim, asking the court to prohibit state registration authorities from entering a record of the company's termination into the Unified State Register.

The amount claimed bore no relation to the true purpose of the suit. The claimant's interest lay not in collecting any awarded sum, but in the mere existence of an unpaid debt and an unresolved court dispute, because under the applicable legal framework these very circumstances make it impossible to complete the liquidation of a legal entity. The wage-recovery claim was used as a tool to keep the company suspended in the termination stage indefinitely.

Attorney Dmytro Chuguienko of Disputes Law Firm, together with the firm's junior partner Roman Kudlai, who represented the company, chose a solution that deprived this construction of its foundation. Because the claimant evaded providing his bank details for payment, the company discharged its monetary obligation by postal money transfer addressed to the former director, having calculated and paid all taxes and levies required by tax law. Once the obligation was fully performed, the subject matter of the dispute ceased to exist, and the court closed the proceedings.

Background

On November 26, 2025, the former director filed his statement of claim through the Electronic Court subsystem, seeking recovery of sums he alleged had not been paid upon his dismissal in connection with the company's liquidation. On November 27, 2025, he filed a motion to secure the claim, demanding a prohibition on any state registration authority performing registration actions related to the company's termination.

By its ruling of November 28, 2025, the Khadzhybeiskyi District Court of Odesa denied the motion to secure the claim. Disagreeing with the denial, the claimant appealed that ruling to the Odesa Court of Appeal, insisting on the prohibition of registration actions.

The sequence of these actions reveals the true intent. A prohibition on registration actions would have halted the liquidation outright. But even with the motion denied, the wage-recovery dispute itself remained a sufficient obstacle to completing the liquidation procedure. The claimant did not need to win the case — he needed it to exist, and to produce a debt as its outcome.

The Mechanism Blocking the Liquidation

The construction underlying the claimant's calculation rested on two circumstances operating in sequence, which together blocked the liquidation at both stages — during the proceedings and after a judgment.

The first circumstance operates while the case is pending. The liquidation of a legal entity cannot be completed without clearance from the tax authority. The Main Department of the State Tax Service will not sign the clearance certificate or grant permission to deregister a company where an unresolved dispute over payments to an employee and an outstanding wage debt exist. As long as the case is pending, the liquidation is suspended by the very fact of its existence.

The second circumstance — and this was where the principal danger lay — takes effect after a judgment. The crucial point is that, to block the liquidation, the claimant needed only to obtain an award of any amount whatsoever, however symbolic. Had the court denied the bulk of the claims and awarded as little as one hundred hryvnias in wages, the consequence would have been identical: the existence of an unpaid debt, regardless of its size, makes completion of the liquidation impossible. The tax authority will not permit deregistration of a company while a wage debt remains.

This is where the trap closed. Once the judgment became final, the debt had to be discharged, yet it could be discharged in only two ways — by transferring funds to the details provided by the creditor, or through enforcement proceedings initiated by submitting the writ of execution. The claimant neither provided bank details nor intended to submit the writ of execution for enforcement. In doing so, he cut off both avenues of discharge: voluntary performance by the employer became impossible for want of payment details, while enforcement was never triggered, because the creditor deliberately declined to pursue it.

As a result, a court-awarded debt could not be discharged by any means provided by law, and the company would remain in the termination stage indefinitely — for precisely as long as the claimant wished.

Legal Position and Measures Taken

The defense rested on distinguishing two obligations different in substance. The law requires an employer to duly pay an employee all sums owed upon dismissal, but it does not require the employer to obtain the employee's consent to accept performance. Where a creditor deliberately evades accepting the sums owed to him, such evasion cannot place the debtor in the position of a perpetual defaulter, nor can it keep the obligation alive in defiance of its actual performance.

Given that the claimant consistently withheld his bank details, the company used another lawful method of transferring the funds — a postal money transfer addressed to the former director. The payment was made as a proper settlement with an employee: the company calculated the relevant sums and paid all taxes and levies required by current tax law, including personal income tax and the military levy, with the payment reflected in its reporting. The funds were transferred precisely as wages, bearing every feature of a lawful payment by an employer, rather than as a private transfer between individuals.

What mattered decisively was that the subsequent fate of the transfer had no legal bearing on the resolution of the case. Whether the claimant collected the funds at the post office depended solely on his own will, and given his actual intentions, non-collection was entirely to be expected. For the court, however, what is decisive is the fact of performance by the debtor, not the fact of acceptance by the creditor. The company performed its obligation fully and properly; the claimant's evasion of collection neither revives a discharged obligation nor restores the subject matter of the dispute.

Outcome

By its ruling of April 2, 2026, the Odesa Court of Appeal closed the appellate proceedings on the claimant's appeal against the denial of the motion to secure the claim, following the claimant's withdrawal of his appeal.

By its ruling of April 8, 2026, the Khadzhybeiskyi District Court of Odesa closed the proceedings for absence of a subject matter of dispute. The court established that the defendant had voluntarily paid the sums left unpaid upon dismissal, the average earnings, and the compensation for lost income, so that no unresolved matters remained between the parties and the dispute had been settled out of court.

With the proceedings closed, the foundation on which the liquidation block rested disappeared as well. The debt meant to remain unpaid indefinitely was discharged; the dispute whose very existence obstructed the procedure came to an end. The company's liquidation was unblocked, and the attempt to use a labor dispute as a means of keeping the company indefinitely in the termination stage proved fruitless.

Conclusion

In legal terms, the case marks the line between performance of a monetary obligation and acceptance of that performance. An employer's duty is exhausted by the proper payment of the sums owed to an employee; the creditor's good faith in accepting those sums lies beyond the scope of the debtor's duty. Where a creditor deliberately evades accepting performance in pursuit of an aim other than satisfying his own monetary claim, such evasion neither keeps the obligation alive nor may it lawfully block the company's exercise of its right to complete liquidation. Performance rendered by the debtor lawfully and in full removes the subject matter of the dispute, regardless of whether the creditor chose to accept it.

The practical value of the case lies in the unconventional nature of the chosen solution. Rather than years of challenging the prohibition on registration actions and proving the claimant's motives, the defense removed the very foundation of the construction, leaving it without a subject. Tellingly, the elegance of this step was acknowledged by opposing counsel as well: the solution proved so procedurally sound that it left the opponent no room for further struggle. The most intricate trap was undone not by adding to the volume of procedural work, but by a single precise step that stripped it of its purpose.