Entrepreneur Serhiy Kovalenko intends to sue those who sold him this Volvo C70

In the version he gave at a press conference everything happened like this. A dog ran out on the highway. Serhiy turned the wheel, the car swung into the culvert and hit a tree. Of course, the driver himself is to blame for the accident, but the car’s airbags cushions failed to work, so Serhiy Kovalenko spent four months in a trauma unit ward with head and body injuries. As a result, the former medal- winner of the weightlifting championship of Europe was granted second category disability, a 37-hryvnia pension, and received a $500,000 insurance payment from the Grant C ompany. And only Volvo, the producing company, and its authorized dealer Viking Motors showed no reaction to what happened, Mr. Kovalenko said. A request to send experts here to examine these instantly-inflatable airbags was turned down.

As long as the criminal case about this accident has not been dropped (for absence of such expert examination), Mr. Kovalenko is unable to sue either the producing firm or the dealer. However, there is a catch. This Volvo C70 Coupe was the first car of this make to be sold in Ukraine, so its safety system had not been certified here. But, apart from this system, everything else had been certified, and the sale contract said that the car was completely serviceable and met all technical requirements. But since this proved to be wrong, the injured party and his lawyer believe that somebody should pay compensation for the material and moral damage.

Serhiy Kovalenko and his lawyer Volodymyr Komkov claim that they cannot accept in any way the attitude of the famous car company toward Ukrainian buyers as if they were Third World citizens unable to defend their consumer rights. Thus to activate negotiations, Mr. Kovalenko intends to spread through the media and Internet information about the firm’s actual reneging on its guarantee commitments. Incidentally, Mr. Kovalenko’s press conference was being relayed on-line through the Internet, and over 100 journalists from the US, Canada, Sweden, Germany, and other countries registered at the site.

This is a truly wonderful attempt to defend one’s consumer rights vis- avis an international car firm! But this also raises a question: when shall we also treat our own state so exactingly? And not only one bold businessman but all of us whom our state perpetually cheats and from which it is difficult even to wrest a 37-hryvnia pension.