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Working example · combination of two skills
One of CasusLegal’s most powerful techniques is— combining two skills in a single dialogue. First, “Judicial Act Review” compares the trial court’s decision with the case law of the higher courts and identifies discrepancies; it then “Court Document with Case Law” uses the same data to prepare a complete appeal. For this example, we used an anonymized educational scenario based on the widely discussed dispute over the invalidation of a transaction for the sale of an apartment by a well-known performer (Article 178 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation—mistake).
/proverka-akta
Breaks down the reasoning of another court’s decision into generalizable legal propositions and assigns a status to each: confirmed, discrepancy, or not covered—with references to decisions of the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court, and Supreme Commercial Court.
/casuslegal-sudebny-dokument
Uses the identified discrepancies as the foundation and prepares an appeal: each argument is supported by case law, followed at the end by a catalogue of the decisions used.
The document is anonymized—the parties’ details, dates, and case number have been left as fillable fields. This is an educational example; the appeal is written as if it concerned a different case with the same circumstances and court findings. The completed appeal can be downloaded below.
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Use the connector Higher Courts and the skills /casuslegal-sudebny-dokument and /proverka-akta. Review this judicial decision, analyze whether it complies with the positions of the higher courts, and prepare an appeal against it.
Decision under review: a trial court decision invalidating the preliminary and principal apartment sale and purchase agreements under Part 1 of Article 178 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, terminating the buyer’s ownership title, and returning the apartment to the seller. The decision has been anonymized (names, dates, and addresses are concealed).
The model extracted three generalizable legal propositions from the reasoning and ran a search for contrary authority on each in the case law of the higher courts. The most serious discrepancy became the foundation of the future appeal.
Proposition 1. Having invalidated the transaction under Article 178 of the Civil Code, the court applied the consequences of restoring the parties to their original position (Article 167 of the Civil Code)
Provision: Articles 167 and 178 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. · Status: ⚠️ Discrepancy — level: Plenum of the Supreme Court + position of the Constitutional Court
The court formulated the consequence in truncated form—only as termination of the buyer’s ownership title and return of the apartment to the seller—without resolving the issue of refunding the price paid by the buyer. This contradicts the rule on bilateral restitution: paragraph 80 of Plenum Resolution No. 25 of the Supreme Court (mutual performance under a transaction performed by both parties is deemed equal), Constitutional Court Ruling No. 48-О (Paragraph 2 of Article 167 of the Civil Code—on bilateral restitution), Ruling of the Judicial Chamber for Civil Cases of the Supreme Court No. 41-КГ25-20-К4 (included in Review of Case Law of the Supreme Court No. 1 (2026), paragraph 4) and No. 5-КГ26-11-К2 involving matching circumstances.
Proposition 2. A transaction made under the influence of a material mistake may be invalidated (Paragraph 1 of Article 178 of the Civil Code); the parties’ actual intent is part of the subject matter of proof
Provision: Article 178 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. · Status: ⚠️ Discrepancy — Supreme Court chambers level, as regards the adequacy of reasoning
The court cited the provisions (Articles 1, 10, 177, 178, and 179 of the Civil Code), but did not establish precisely what the mistake consisted of, whether it fell within the list in Paragraph 2 of Article 178 of the Civil Code, or whether it was material. This diverges from the requirement that a finding concerning a defect in consent be supported by specific evidence— Ruling of the Judicial Chamber for Civil Cases of the Supreme Court No. 49-КГ18-60 and No. 67-КГ24-13-К8.
Proposition 3. The court may deny invalidation if the counterparty, exercising ordinary care, could not have recognized the mistake (Paragraph 5 of Article 178 of the Civil Code)
Provision: Paragraph 5 of Article 178 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. · Status: ❓ Not addressed in the court’s assessment
The provision was cited but not applied to the facts. The search was conducted: case law of the higher courts under Paragraph 5 of Article 178 of the Civil Code cuts both ways (recognizability of the mistake by a professional participant—against the buyer); therefore, the proposition is not an independent ground for reversal and is used as a supporting argument.
Conclusion. Propositions reviewed: 3. ⚠️ Discrepancies with the case law of the higher courts: 2 (Proposition 1—Plenum of the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court level; Proposition 2—Supreme Court chambers level). ❓ Not covered: 1.
The central pillar of the appeal is the failure to apply bilateral restitution (a discrepancy at the level of the binding guidance of the Plenum of the Supreme Court and the position of the Constitutional Court). The second pillar is the incomplete reasoning supporting the finding of mistake.
From this point on, the dialogue takes over. The model’s responses deserve particular attention—it does not merely produce text, but explains its decisions and candidly states why one of the arguments was deliberately not presented as a separate ground.
Prepared a draft appeal on behalf of the buyer in Markdown, with live links to case law and verbatim quotations highlighted.
The appeal is built on two pillars. The first, the central one, is that the court applied unilateral restitution: it returned the apartment to the seller and terminated the buyer’s ownership title, but did not resolve the issue of refunding the price paid. This is a direct divergence from Paragraph 2 of Article 167 of the Civil Code as interpreted by the Plenum of the Supreme Court (paragraph 80 of Plenum Resolution No. 25) and the Constitutional Court (48-О), confirmed by recent case law of the Supreme Court’s chambers. The second is that the finding of material mistake is unreasoned.
Review the links and quotations. After your approval, I will prepare the final DOCX in procedural format, with clickable links and a catalogue of the case law used at the end.
Prepare the final text of the appeal.
Preparing the DOCX. The appeal is based on two grounds: the principal ground—application of unilateral restitution instead of bilateral restitution; the supporting ground—the lack of reasoning for the finding of material mistake and the conflation of the grounds under Articles 177, 178, and 179 of the Civil Code.
The parties’ details, dates, and case number have been left as fillable fields. Before filing, they must be entered, the state fee calculation/receipt attached, and the time limit for filing the appeal checked.
Why did you not take into account the proposition that the mistake was unrecognizable?
This was a deliberate choice, not an omission. The proposition that the mistake was unrecognizable operates against the buyer, and presenting it as a separate ground would mean building the appeal on an argument directly contradicted by Supreme Court case law.
The mechanics of Paragraph 5 of Article 178 of the Civil Code: the provision protects the counterparty of the mistaken party, but only if the mistake was such that it could not have been recognized by a person acting with ordinary care. The standard of care expected of a professional is higher, and this works against our client: the buyer is registered as an individual entrepreneur whose principal business activity is the leasing and management of real estate. The trial court relied on precisely this point.
This reasoning is directly confirmed by the Supreme Court. In Ruling of the Judicial Chamber for Civil Cases of the Supreme Court No. 84-КГ26-1-К3 under similar circumstances, the chamber held that the buyer—a professional participant in the real estate market—could and should have recognized the seller’s mistake, which precludes protection of the buyer’s interests under Paragraph 5 of Article 178 of the Civil Code. Had I made this argument an independent ground, the opposing party and the court would have responded with this position, and the argument would not merely have failed—it would have undermined confidence in the appeal as a whole.
Therefore, in paragraph 10 I left a procedural rather than substantive argument in essence: the court cited Paragraph 5 of Article 178 but did not assess the recognizability of the mistake, limiting itself to referring to the individual entrepreneur status as a self-sufficient argument. This is a criticism of the lack of reasoning, not an assertion that “the mistake was unrecognizable”—the latter is difficult to prove on the available facts.
If you wish, I can strengthen paragraph 10 in this direction while keeping the argument within the scope of “the court gave no reasons.” But it should not be made a separate central ground—the appeal has one central pillar, namely unilateral restitution.
No, don’t.
Understood. The appeal remains in its current version.
The result is an appeal built around the discrepancy identified by the first skill and supported by verbatim quotations from the case law selected by the second. Download it and review it in full.
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Made in Claude Opus 4.8 in combination with the CasusLegal connector and the “Judicial Act Review” and “Court Document with Case Law” skills. The excerpts are reproduced verbatim from the database, without paraphrasing.