Civil Court

 

Did your head not start spinning after reading the section about the administrative courts? Brace yourself—those were just the warm-up acts. The administrative nightmare that has dragged on for three years, with no end in sight, is merely the prelude to the real hell: the civil court.

Since the summer of 2022—three full years now—the civil case has been stuck at the preparatory stage. The defendants, represented by well-fed, well-paid lawyers, have spent these three years doing nothing more than “familiarizing themselves” with the case materials. Meanwhile, not a single one of my own motions to access the case file has even been considered. It is an absurdity beyond explanation—so wildly at odds with any normal human understanding of how justice should function.

Out of the dozen motions I have submitted over the years (not counting another dozen requesting access to the case file, which will likely never be reviewed), only two were ever addressed. The rest did not begin to be considered until September 2025.

In October 2023, the court attempted to move to a hearing on the merits without giving me the opportunity to take the necessary steps: to request an expert examination or even to have my own thesis added to the case file. Judge Koldina justified the decision to proceed to the merits by citing a motion supposedly submitted by my representative—even though I have never had any representative at all.

That was the end. Money had won.

In November 2023, I arrived at that hearing on the merits with a can of gasoline in my bag, intending to set myself on fire in front of the courthouse—either before or after the session, which was clearly going to end with a predetermined outcome. It felt like the only way out. Recusing a judge who refuses to be recused is practically impossible, and filing a complaint with the prosecutor’s office against a judge is a mere formality—one the prosecutors do not even bother to respond to.

But then something inexplicable happened.

The hearing did not take place because Judge Koldina resigned.

It turned out she had her own skeletons in the closet, and inspections had begun. For a judge, resignation halts all investigations and guarantees an astronomical lifetime pension.

She was followed by another judge, who reopened the preparatory proceedings but, after a year of sluggish progress, recused herself as well.

Now a fourth judge is pretending to be handling the case.

Here, I will provide a detailed account of this process in the same format as in the article on the administrative courts. I will do this slowly, as time permits—there are many documents, and very little time. 

25.07.2022 - Statement of Claim.  A civil lawsuit was filed with the Holosiivskyi District Court of Kyiv seeking protection of my copyright. The claim included the following demands:

1. To recognize the fact of the violation of my copyright by Ivan Vasylovych Danyliuk, Inna Valeriivna Kozytska, Serhii Oleksandrovych Shykovets, and Vitalii Yevheniiovych Luniov.

2. To prohibit Ivan Vasylovych Danyliuk, Inna Valeriivna Kozytska, Serhii Oleksandrovych Shykovets, and Vitalii Yevheniiovych Luniov from disseminating in any written or electronic form the text of the article “The cultural syndrome ‘individualism–collectivism’ and its psychological peculiarities including well-being of regional communities' representatives in Ukraine”, published in Fundamental and Applied Researches in Practice of Leading Scientific Schools in 2018, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 55–61.

3. To prohibit Ivan Vasylovych Danyliuk, Inna Valeriivna Kozytska, and Serhii Oleksandrovych Shykovets from stating in any written or electronic form that they are the authors of the article “The cultural syndrome ‘individualism–collectivism’ and its psychological peculiarities including well-being of regional communities' representatives in Ukraine”, published in Fundamental and Applied Researches in Practice of Leading Scientific Schools in 2018, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 55–61.

4. To require Vitalii Yevheniiovych Luniov, within 10 days of the court decision entering into legal force, to publish on the main page of the journal’s website (Fundamental and Applied Researches in Practice of Leading Scientific Schools, https://farplss.org/index.php/journal) the operative part of the court decision and the following notice: “The journal Fundamental and Applied Researches in Practice of Leading Scientific Schools retracts the article Danyliuk, I.V., Kozytska, I.V., Shykovets, S.O., ‘The cultural syndrome “individualism–collectivism” and its psychological peculiarities including well-being of regional communities' representatives in Ukraine”, published in 2018, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 55–61, due to the violation of the authorship rights of L. Borysenko.”.

5. To recover from the defendants, jointly and severally, the amount of 400,000 UAH (four hundred thousand hryvnias) in moral damages—100,000 UAH from each defendant.

28.07.2022 - A fairly prompt ruling was issued to open the proceedings. A preparatory hearing was scheduled for 1 December.

01.12.2022 - No response whatsoever from the defendants, and therefore the hearing was postponed. From my experience dealing with the courts, the first hearing almost never takes place. Any defendant who fails to exploit the opportunity to derail the initial session is simply being negligent. This is the logic by which interactions in our society often operate: cause harm whenever you can be confident that nothing will happen to you in return.

16.12.2022 - A response to the statement of claim was submitted by Kozytska’s lawyer. It begins by asserting that Kozytska supposedly had no knowledge whatsoever of the article; her name, it is claimed, was added to the list of authors without her consent. A few paragraphs later, however, we read that Kozytska “does not remember exactly how or when she reviewed the research material that was later submitted for publication.” An absurdity. Why list the article among your publications, then? The article appeared in the publication lists of all three plagiarists until June 2022. Yet, after the commission issued its findings in May 2022, they quietly deleted it from Google Scholar, ORCID, and ResearchGate. Kozytska’s lawyer now writes that “databases ‘pull in’ Kozytska as a co-author, which, as stated above, occurred without her consent.” In what language is this written? For whom? And for what purpose?

27.12.2022 - A more aggressive and heavy-handed response arrived from Danilyuk’s lawyer, Mr. Svintsov. The essence of his argument is this: my thesis, it turns out, is not an original study but merely a summary of other scholars’ research. An interesting claim, especially in the following context. Let me remind the reader that 75% of the text of the defendants’ article and 100% of the numerical data—down to the second decimal place—match my thesis. If my work is not original, then how exactly can their article be original? And yet in their article they explicitly write: “original data of the authors, 2018.” The appendices to the response include—naturally—copies of Danilyuk’s diplomas, awards, and lists of achievements (especially his alleged contributions to developing tests for judges), and, of course, a reference to the war. Overall, the style and illiteracy of Svintsov’s submission differ little from the article written by the plagiarists themselves. The only distinction is that the plagiarists at least translated their text into English, whereas Svintsov simply mangles Ukrainian—a language that, for him, appears to be as distant as English is for an average dean.

I should note that both responses were sent by Ukrposhta, even though professional attorneys are, of course, registered in the Electronic Court system. This tactic is used to make it as difficult as possible to submit a timely reply: by the time the document arrives, deadlines may already have expired, and properly restoring them is not always simple. The document may also be lost entirely—creating serious problems for the recipient.

10.01.2023 - My reply to the defendants’ submissions.

Around February–March 2023 - Kozytska’s lawyer, Zhygareva, apparently regained her bearings, realized she had written utter nonsense, and made a (clumsy) attempt to slightly adjust her legal position as stated in her response—while also trying to “correct” Svintsov’s arguments. This peculiar document, titled additional explanations was never sent to me, bears no date, and I discovered it in the case file only in the autumn of 2023. It was added to the file in direct violation of the Civil Procedure Code, which clearly requires that evidence be submitted together with substantive motions and be sent to all parties to the case.

TO BE CONTINUED......