Yekaterinburg Man Declared Dead While Alive Wins Compensation

In Yekaterinburg, a man was declared dead due to an investigator«s error. Through the court, he was able to legally »resurrect« and obtain compensation.

In March 2024, a corpse was found in one of Yekaterinburg«s apartments. A witness identified it as his friend Nikolai. Since the cause of death was non-criminal and the deceased»s documents were not in the apartment, law enforcement recorded the deceased«s full name based on the acquaintance»s words. After that, an investigator from the Investigative Committee sent the documents to the Forensic Medical Examination Bureau, and from there, the data was transferred to the civil registry office.

Later, police officers checked the corpse«s fingerprints and found out that it was not Nikolai who had died. But it was too late — the civil registry office had already entered the death record into the documents.

«For Nikolai himself, who was in another city at the time of his »death,« life in bureaucratic hell began: his bank cards and accounts, his account on the »Gosuslugi« portal were blocked, he was denied free medical care under the compulsory health insurance, including necessary treatment. Nikolai could not establish paternity for his three children and register a marriage, obtain a driver»s license, or register with the Social Fund. The man was forced to take unpaid leave,« — reported the press service of the courts of the Sverdlovsk Region.

The Yekaterinburg resident applied to the Leninsky District Court with a lawsuit to amend the documents and compensate for moral damages. «Seeing a grave with my data, I experienced physical pain in the chest area,» — the plaintiff described his sufferings in court. The defendants were the civil registry office and the Investigative Committee of Russia. Nikolai demanded 177,500 rubles (approximately $2,000 at current rates) from each of the agencies.

Representatives of the Investigative Committee of Russia stated that they were not at fault for what happened — the police were responsible for collecting data on the identity of the deceased, and the investigator only entered them into the resolution. A representative of the civil registry office assured that they also did not violate anything — the information was entered based on a document. The defendants asked to dismiss the lawsuit.

In the end, the court decided that it was the employee of the Investigative Committee who made the final decision and did not take measures to establish the identity of the deceased. The lawsuit was partially satisfied — from the treasury of the Investigative Committee, 50,000 rubles (approximately $556 at current rates) must be paid as compensation for moral damages. The civil registry office was ordered to change the death record — instead of Nikolai«s full name, to enter »Unknown.«

Earlier we reported how a resident of Yekaterinburg was deprived of his driver«s license for driving under the influence of drugs. Moreover, the incident was recorded in a city where the guy had never been. Then the cause was forged licenses of the actual offender.