It is prohibited to place vehicles in areas occupied by green spaces.
This article exists and operates specifically in Moscow, providing for increased fines compared to fines for the same violations in the rest of Russia.
Unlike the rest of the country, in the city of Moscow, for legal entities parking a vehicle on the lawn, a fine of 300,000 rubles is imposed, for individuals - 5,000 rubles. The difference is very significant, so if the car is registered to a legal entity, then there is a danger of receiving a fine of 300,000 rubles even if the car was not actually used as part of the company’s activities (for example, it was simply in the personal use of the general director, one of the employees and etc.). The concept of lawn in the law has been replaced by the wording “territory occupied by green spaces”; the legislator made this trick due to the fact that the lawn must have certain distinctive features, and given the fact that it is located in the city, it must be on the balance sheet of the city, behind it maintenance must be carried out, etc., in other words, this gave the lawyer extra room for maneuver in order to protect his client by proving that the lawn is not a lawn at all.
Article 8.25. Placing vehicles in areas occupied by green spaces. Placing vehicles on a lawn or other area occupied by green spaces - entails the imposition of an administrative fine on citizens in the amount of five thousand rubles; for officials - thirty thousand rubles; for legal entities - three hundred thousand rubles.
What is the problem
Before you appeal a fine for parking on the lawn, it is worth telling why so many questions, problems and disputes arise because of it. Both in winter and in summer.
There are several reasons:
- There is no clear definition of the concept of lawn in any piece of legislation or document;
- Not all areas where grass grows can be considered an area with landscaping;
- At the same time, a piece of land where there is no grass at all may in fact be part of the green areas.
Roughly speaking, if you leave your car in mud or clay, you may in fact be given a fine for parking on the lawn. It sounds crazy, but it's true.
Both traffic police officers and the drivers themselves take advantage of the lack of clear wording. The first ones simply issue fines to those who stand outside the parking lot. And the latter challenge such punishments.
Litigations often occur around driving on sidewalks and driveways when the signal is yellow.
Where to appeal legal. face a fine for parking on the lawn?
You can appeal the fine directly to the body that issued the controversial decision to bring the legal entity to administrative liability - to MADI. A substantiated complaint accompanied by documents as evidence must be sent to MADI by registered mail. In practice, this is a waste of time, the chances of success are approximately zero. We recommend skipping this step.
The correct decision would be to appeal the fine immediately in court! A complaint against a decision to prosecute someone for parking a car on a lawn must be sent to the court that serves the address where the violation was committed. You will find the address at which the parking was recorded in the resolution that you received from MADI, and the court is determined on the website of the Moscow City Court (on the website https://www.mos-gorsud.ru section “territorial jurisdiction”).
A few of our cancellations in the courts
Decision to cancel the fine Kuzminsky court
Decision to cancel the fine Lublin court
Decision to cancel the fine Kuntsevo court
Decision to cancel the fine Nikulinsky court
Process of proof
To cancel a decision of the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate or the Moscow Automobile Inspectorate, fairly weighty arguments are needed. Among them may be:
- Absence of an offense: the car was not parked on the lawn, there are no administrative procedural materials - protocols, resolutions.
- The driver was not the owner of the car. In this case, the court can still leave the decision on the fine in force, since responsibility for finding the car still falls on its owner.
- The car was moved onto the lawn due to an emergency, for example, in order to remove it from the roadway.
Each situation is individual and requires detailed research. The possibility of parking a car on the lawn in the yard causes controversy. The car may not interfere with pedestrians and vehicles, but the law also applies to areas inside the yard. Law enforcement officers issue protocols on bringing to justice mechanically, often without delving into the substance of the situation.
The car may be located on a piece of land that looks like a lawn. You will have to prove it based on specific facts and testimony of witnesses.
Most officials treat offenses formally, automatically finding drivers guilty. Motorists can only refer to specific facts and convince officials and the court of their innocence.
What are the deadlines for appealing a MADI decision?
The period for appealing a fine imposed on a legal entity is 10 days from the date of receipt of the decision. Please note that the deadline does NOT start from the date when the violation itself occurred (the driver parked the car on the lawn), but namely from the date when the legal entity. the person received a ruling. Decrees come from MADI by registered mail with tracking numbers; accordingly, the date of receipt of the resolution will be visible on the Russian Post website and this information can be verified very simply. A little more about the countdown of the deadline for appealing the MADI decision under Art. 8.25 Code of Administrative Offenses:
- upon receipt at the post office, 10 days are counted from the day you received the letter
- when applying in person to MADI, the period is counted from the date of personal delivery
- if the storage period for the letter at the post office has expired and it has gone back to MADI, then 10 days are calculated from the last day the letter was stored at the post office
If you find a fine for parking on the lawn in an application, on a website, etc., then we strongly do not recommend waiting for the decision by mail. Letters in the mail sometimes get lost, simply disappear without a trace, are handed to the wrong people, MADI makes a mistake in the recipient's address and a million other reasons. Explaining later in court that the letter was lost somewhere in the mail and the deadline was missed for a good reason is not the most pleasant experience and does not always end in success. Don’t risk 300,000 rubles - you urgently need to go to MADI and get a resolution on purpose!
MADI address: Moscow, st. Kalanchevskaya, 49 (metro station Komsomolskaya, 10 min walk)
If this deadline is missed, then this is of course not good and complicates the procedure, but is not an insurmountable obstacle. The period for appeal is restored in court simultaneously with the consideration of the case on the merits; in practice, Moscow courts do not interfere with the restoration of the period.
Loshakov Sergey
Leading lawyer of the bar
Sergey Valerievich is an active lawyer of the Moscow Bar Association with extensive judicial practice and extensive experience. Fill out the application in the feedback form and receive a free initial consultation with a specialist.
What should a driver do?
When appealing a parking fine, specific circumstances and the applicant’s evidence base are important. You can record the situation using photos and videos, including taking measurements of the lawn. Such a piece of land should have the following characteristics:
- area with grass and shrubs;
- area with a fence (curb), but without asphalt pavement;
- an area limited to certain sizes and included in the technical plan of the area - that is, when there are specific designations of a certain piece of land as a lawn.
Traffic police officers, MADI employees, and even a local police officer have the right to hold a citizen accountable. The residents of the house have the right to call the latter. Then the district police officer will draw up a protocol on the offense, which will be approved by the city administration or other local government authority. The fine must be paid on time.
At the same time, it is possible to pay for tow truck services. You should try to challenge a fine for parking on a lawn administratively - to do this, you should send a complaint to the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate, MADI (Moscow Road Inspectorate).
| After the decision is issued, the citizen has 10 days to file a complaint with an official or court. |
Reinstatement of the deadline is allowed only for a valid reason.
What should I send to court and how quickly can I cancel a fine for parking on the lawn?
After the court has been determined, which, according to its territorial jurisdiction, has jurisdiction over the case, and the deadline for appeal has not been missed (if missed, an additional petition is drawn up to restore the missed deadline), the next step is to file a complaint against the decision in the case of an administrative offense under Art. 8.25 Code of Administrative Offenses of Moscow. The requirements for the complaint itself are established by the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation and there are quite a lot of them; it is impossible to briefly talk about them all. It is important to know that such a complaint can be signed either by the director of the organization, or by a representative under a power of attorney, or by a lawyer under a warrant; documents confirming authority (power of attorney) must be attached to the complaint. The period for consideration of the complaint itself in court is established by the code and is “no more than 2 months”, in other words, from the moment the court accepts the complaint, a decision can be made in a week, or maybe in 6 weeks, but not more than 2 months. While the decision to attract a legal entity for parking on the lawn is being appealed, it has no legal force, which means that it is impossible to apply any collection measures (blocking the account, writing off funds from the organization’s current account, etc.). The most important thing in a complaint is evidence. The most reliable way to change the penalty from 300,000 rubles to 5,000 rubles is to prove in court that a violation of parking rules (parking on the lawn) was committed by an individual who, for example, rented a car from an LLC (PJSC, etc.) and it should bear responsibility. A less obvious method, but used if it is impossible to follow the simple path described above, is to search for procedural violations in the process of bringing a legal entity to administrative responsibility. The Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation contains a lot of requirements for the procedure for attracting (the right to a defense, the right to participate in the consideration of a case of an administrative offense, the right to draw up a protocol on the violation in the presence of a legal entity, etc.), quite often it turns out to find a formal violation of the Code and declare the resolution illegal on these grounds.
What does an absurd fine look like?
In the presented photo, you can see a real fine under 8.25 Code of Administrative Offenses, for which a legal entity almost had to pay three hundred thousand rubles!
If you look closely, you will notice that in fact the car’s wheels are standing on the very edge of the paved area! Only its front part, the bumper, hangs over the lawn. This photo was taken in such a way that it is difficult to notice, but at the request of the court, the original was obtained in high resolution, after which all questions disappeared by themselves.
In our practice, this is not an isolated case. It happened more than once that the car was parked on the side of the road, and the fine came for parking on the lawn. In one of our cases, the car was parked on a dirt driveway to a construction site and was being unloaded - even in such an absurd situation, MADI attracted the owner of the vehicle under Art. 8.25 ZGM 45.
PS The fine was canceled by the decision of the Preobrazhensky District Court of Moscow dated March 10, 2021, case No. 12-0424/2021.
What does a positive result depend on?
Successfully challenging a fine for parking on a lawn is possible in the following cases:
- the car was not parked on the lawn;
- the subject of the offense did not drive the car or the car was not registered in the name of the citizen held accountable;
- the protocol of the offense was drawn up with significant errors - regarding the date, time, place, event of the offense;
A legal entity may also be held liable. The company and the citizen who own the cars have 10 days to challenge the fine. You can challenge a fine decision that has already entered into force. To do this, you must submit an application to the regional court of the Russian Federation.
Experts recognize that the cancellation of a fine, subject to all the formalities of its registration, depends on the discretion of the court and the official court. Or you will have to provide conclusive evidence of the absence of an offense.
What procedural violations are often committed by MADI under Art. 8.25 ZGM 45?
Procedural violations when bringing to administrative responsibility are quite common and can often be decisive in court, since violation of the procedure for bringing to responsibility established by law violates the rights of the person brought to account and entails the unconditional cancellation of the fine. According to the current legislation, a citizen (legal entity, individual entrepreneur, etc.) is given the right to protection, which he has the right to exercise, including at the time of drawing up a protocol on an administrative offense, i.e. be present during its preparation, submit petitions, challenges, present evidence, etc. This rule of law does not apply only to violations recorded using automatic violation recording systems (for example, road cameras) - i.e. special certified technical means for automatically recording violations, and calling the offender to draw up a protocol is not necessary only in this case. However, most protocols under Art. 8.25 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of Moscow is drawn up after complaints from “initiative” citizens who record violations on the camera of their mobile phone and send them to the PAK PM application (Software and hardware complex “Moscow Assistant”).
“PAK PM” (Software and hardware complex “Moscow Assistant”) and a citizen’s mobile phone are not a special certified technical means of automatically recording offenses!
From the above, it should be concluded that when you immediately receive a ready-made resolution with a fine, but you were not called to draw up a protocol on an administrative offense at MADI, the procedure for bringing to administrative responsibility was violated, and you are deprived of the right to defense. To prove this fact, it is necessary to file a corresponding petition in court to request the materials of the administrative case from MADI (the court itself will not request anything on its own initiative). From the materials received at the request, it will be clear that the protocol was drawn up in the absence of the person involved; there are no summonses in the material to draw up a protocol. Practice shows that this method of defense works well in Moscow courts.
Who fixes parking on the lawn?
Usually this is an active citizen with a phone, but sometimes it happens like in the photo above.
What will happen after the court decision and the cancellation of the fine for parking on the lawn in relation to a legal entity?
After the court cancels the decision to hold your company administratively liable, the court will send its decision to MADI (you can receive it on purpose and duplicate the sending in person) and then the individual will be held accountable, with a fine of 5,000 rubles (although this also happens not always, there are cases when MADI misses the deadline for bringing to justice and then the case ends without a fine). If the bailiffs have already initiated enforcement proceedings against your company, then it is subject to termination; if they managed to write something off from the organization’s current account, then this money will be returned to you.
Is there a fine for parking on the lawn in winter? Is there a fine? The answer is yes, there are and they are attracted.
MADI attracts for parking on the lawn in winter according to Art. 8.25 ZGM No. 45 is exactly the same as in the summer. Active citizens still continue to use the PAK-PM application and take photographs of cars parked where the lawn is not even visible, and legal entities and individuals receive fines of 300,000 rubles. and 5,000 rub. respectively. Formally, from a legal point of view, the authorized body explains such actions quite simply - just because the lawn is covered with snow and is not visible, it has not ceased to be a lawn, which means it is still impossible to place vehicles there. After the snow melts, the soil cover will be damaged in any case, which in the summer will negatively affect the already green plantings. When defending themselves in court, representatives of MADI literally say the following: “In winter, the lawn does not die, the root system does not go anywhere, it is alive and overwinters under the snow, and a 2-ton car, pushing through the snow cover with its weight, destroys it.”
Another question is how the court will react to the argument that since under a layer of snow it was impossible in principle to determine where the border of the roadway lies and the territory occupied by green spaces begins, then the driver should not be held responsible for such a violation, and in this case, for example, utilities are to blame services? The answer is that the court will react positively, this is a weighty argument and the chances of canceling this fine are greatly increased. The resolution itself on bringing to administrative responsibility from MADI always contains, on the front side, a photograph of the offense (black and white, of dubious quality), so it would not be amiss for the court to attach to it your good and color photograph of the place where the violation was committed, in which The absurdity of the situation will be much more visible. The photo must be taken from several angles with reference to the address - the nearest buildings with address signs (street, house number) should be visible in the photo.
To summarize the above, in winter people are attracted for parking on the lawn in exactly the same way as in summer. The difference is that when you go to court to appeal this fine, you have one more weighty argument in your arsenal than in the summer. The main thing is not to take the position of “there is no lawn there, there is snow there.” This position is incorrect. Subject to proof is the impossibility for the driver, due to circumstances beyond his control, to determine where the border of the roadway lies and the territory formally occupied by green spaces begins.
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Where should I complain?
As a rule, citizens who are dissatisfied with the parking of their neighbors’ cars in the green zone initially try to resolve the issue peacefully, but most often no persuasion has any effect on the offender. The situation can only be corrected by bringing the offender to justice.
Having collected all the necessary evidence, the applicant can apply to the following authorities with a complaint against the violator:
- traffic police department;
- city district administration;
- independent online resource “Angry Citizen”.
In addition, you can also contact the duty station of the territorial police department. A police patrol squad or a local police officer may respond to such an appeal.
Contacting the traffic police
A large number of services are now provided online, including citizens contacting the traffic police.
The applicant will not have to waste time standing in line outside the office to file a complaint. There is a special online service for this.
After collecting evidence of a parking violation, the applicant will need to:
- go to the official website of the traffic police;
- In the “services” tab, select “Reception of requests”;
- in the window that opens, familiarize yourself with the rules for submitting an appeal , and then check the appropriate box for familiarization and click the “Submit an appeal” button;
- in the form that opens, you will need to fill in all the necessary fields in the form (full name, telephone number, purpose of the request, main text);
- attach photographs confirming the violation;
- click the “Send request” button.
After submitting the completed form, the request will be assigned a number. The answer will come in the method (e-mail, written form) that the applicant chose earlier when filling out the application. Review of the complaint may take up to 30 days.
You can also file a complaint during a personal visit to the traffic police department by making a written statement and providing printed evidence.
Complaint to the district administration
The second option is to file a complaint about parking on the lawn with the district administration. Each administration has a commission that, at its meetings, considers citizens’ appeals, including complaints about parking on the lawn.
When contacting the district administration, the applicant will need to make a complaint in writing and attach evidence to it. The complaint must indicate the place, date and time of the offense, and the registration number of the car.
In addition, you can involve neighbors who also witnessed the violation. Their explanations must be recorded in writing in free form.
Online resource “Angry Citizen”
Another option to complain about a violator is the online resource “Angry Citizen,” which processes complaints from residents throughout Russia.
Using this service is very simple. To submit an application you must:
- go to the official Internet resource “Angry Citizen”;
- from the listed list, select the desired category (select “Yard” and go to the “Cars on the lawn” section);
- In the form that opens, fill in all the necessary points of the complaint;
- attach photo and video materials;
- click the “Submit Application” button.
The appeal will be automatically sent to the organization responsible for resolving this issue.
