Attorney Gintarė Girdzijauskienė, 28 October 2026
By its judgment of 28 October 2026, the Plungė Chamber of Klaipėda District Court dismissed in full a claim in which the buyer sought to terminate the sale and purchase contract for a new wheel loader, to apply restitution and to recover damages. In this case we represented the defendant, the seller of the machinery. The court found the claim unfounded and unproven and awarded the defendant all of its litigation costs against the claimant.
The claimant based its claims on the allegation that during the first eight months of operation the loader had become unfit for use: it pointed to oil leaks, damage to the electrical wiring, corrosion, and defects in the cab and in assembly. As its main evidence it submitted a defect inspection report that it had commissioned on its own initiative. The judgment has not yet become final and may be appealed.
The defence position
The core of the defence was not to rebut each defect the claimant listed, but to ask whether the claimant had any basis at all for choosing the most extreme remedy available to a buyer. In the closing speech we developed this position along five lines: the claimant did not discharge its burden of proof; the defect inspection report it submitted does not have the evidential force of an expert opinion; the odometer data submitted by the claimant itself confirm intensive use of the loader; the chosen remedy is manifestly disproportionate; and, finally, the claimant did not comply with the maintenance conditions set out in the contract.
Burden of proof
Under Article 6.333(1) of the Civil Code and Article 178 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the buyer must prove not only that the item has defects, but also that they existed when the item was handed over or arose from causes that existed before the handover. We drew the court’s attention to the fact that the claimant’s position on the defects themselves remained inconsistent: the statement of claim listed fifteen defects, while the defect inspection report submitted by the claimant listed four essentially different defects, only one of which matched the list in the claim. The loader was handed over under a delivery and acceptance certificate in which the buyer confirmed that it had no complaints about quality. The seller, in good faith, remedied some of the defects even before the complaint, and as to the rest, instead of using the defect-remedy procedure provided for in the contract, the claimant immediately demanded termination of the contract and a refund of the full price.
Evidential value of the defect inspection report
We treated the defect inspection report submitted by the claimant, and the repair estimate submitted with it, as a unilaterally commissioned private document which is not a court-ordered expert examination and whose reliability must be assessed critically, together with the other evidence in the case (Articles 185, 197 and 212 of the Code of Civil Procedure). The inspection was carried out without the defendant’s participation, visually only and without dismantling anything, as the report itself acknowledges. The report did not establish the cause or the time of origin of a single defect, that is, precisely the circumstances on which the seller’s liability depends.
The author of the report, examined as a witness, only reinforced these doubts. He confirmed that the inspection took about an hour, that the photographs attached to the report were taken not by him but by the claimant’s manager, that he identified the type of oil by its colour, and that the repair estimate is preliminary. The witness also admitted that the engine overhaul included in his own estimate is not worthwhile, because a new engine would cost less. The claimant did not ask for an expert examination to be ordered, although the court explained this possibility to it. Nor did it approach the manufacturer, although the parties had agreed in the contract to resolve quality disputes on the basis of the manufacturer’s findings.
Odometer data
The decisive factor was the analysis of the engine-hour meter data submitted by the claimant itself. The claimant was reluctant to provide these data: although the court ordered it to do so several times, it submitted cropped or partly covered photographs, and it provided a legible reading only after our request and a corresponding court resolution. The data showed that before the complaint the loader had worked 104.8 engine hours, and afterwards a further 268.6, that is, more than 70 per cent of its total operating time falls in the period after the claimant demanded termination of the contract because of allegedly fundamental defects. Average use increased from about 13.3 to 19.6 engine hours per month. The court adopted these calculations and found that the data submitted by the claimant refute its own assertion that the loader could not be operated even minimally.
Proportionality and operating conditions
The estimate submitted by the claimant itself put the cost of remedying all the listed defects at about a quarter of the price of the loader. So even if all the alleged defects had existed, according to the claimant’s own data they could be remedied and therefore could not be regarded as fundamental. We pointed out that restitution, where the loader had been used for almost two years, would mean unjust enrichment of the claimant and a transfer of the entire commercial risk to the seller (Articles 1.5 and 6.222 of the Civil Code). In addition, the claimant, as a business entity, had to comply with the maintenance interval set in the contract, every 50 engine hours (Article 6.189(1) of the Civil Code), but submitted no evidence that maintenance had been carried out, and in its correspondence with the seller rejected the seller’s instruction to change the lubricants.
Case law on which we based the defence
Our main point of reference was the ruling of the Supreme Court of Lithuania of 6 April 2023 in civil case No. e3K-3-112-1075/2023. In it, the court of cassation, having explained that the buyer must prove not only that defects exist but also that they existed when the item was handed over, set aside the decisions of the lower courts and dismissed the buyer’s claim. The same ruling stresses that, when assessing the remedy chosen by the buyer, it is necessary to take into account when and for what reasons the defects became apparent, whether the item can be used, and whether the defects can be remedied at a proportionate cost within a reasonable time.
We based the nature of termination of a contract as a last-resort measure on the ruling of the Supreme Court of Lithuania of 18 February 2016 in civil case No. 3K-3-109-421/2016, which explains that this option is available only where the other remedies set out in points 1–3 of Article 6.334(1) of the Civil Code are not sufficient to protect the buyer’s infringed rights. We linked the question of a fundamental breach to the criteria of Article 6.217 of the Civil Code, above all to whether the buyer essentially received what it expected from the contract.
We also relied on appellate case law in similar cases. By its ruling of 18 February 2016 in civil case No. 2A-108-569/2016, Šiauliai Regional Court dismissed a buyer’s claim to terminate a sale and purchase contract for a loader, because the buyer did not prove that the repair would cost more than half of the price paid, and the report submitted by the buyer did not state which faults had been found or what their causes were. In its ruling of 27 October 2025 in civil case No. e2A-466-544/2025, Panevėžys Regional Court held that the need for repair stated in a defect report does not provide a basis for a conclusion about the extent of the defects at the time of handover where it has not been ruled out that more extensive defects may have been caused by the buyer’s own actions, including continued use of the item. It is precisely these criteria, the ratio of the repair cost to the price of the item and the content of the defect report, that are also reflected in the reasoning of the judgment.
Significance for practice
The court agreed with our position that the claimant did not prove a fundamental breach of the contract and that the remedy it chose is disproportionate to the defects it listed. The case confirms once again that termination of a contract is an ultima ratio measure, and that whether it applies depends not on the mere existence of defects, but on their nature, whether they can be remedied, and the parties’ conduct in performing the contract.
For machinery sellers, this case is a reminder of the importance of a properly documented handover of the item, clearly defined maintenance conditions in the contract, and a prompt response to the buyer’s complaints, while keeping all correspondence between the parties. Buyers who find defects in an item should first use the remedies that the law provides for defects that can be remedied: to demand that they be remedied without charge or that the price be reduced.
The article is based on the anonymised, not yet final judgment of the Plungė Chamber of Klaipėda District Court of 28 October 2026.
