Judicial Fire and Technical Expertise

Judicial fire-technical expertise is carried out in order to establish the circumstances of the emergence and development of combustion, which is one of the key tasks in judicial proceedings in civil cases involving fires, in courts of general jurisdiction and arbitration, since these circumstances may be in some way connected with the actions of people or with manifestations of natural phenomena.

A fire in accordance with the definition of the Federal Law dated December 21, 1994 No. 69-ФЗ “On Fire Safety” is an uncontrolled burning that causes material damage, harm to life and health.

citizens, the interests of society and the state. The emergence and development of fire are subject to certain laws and are accompanied by the presence of dangerous factors (high temperature, thermal radiation, toxic and optically dense smoke, etc.). It is due to the natural nature of the processes occurring in this process, the formation of corresponding traces on the elements of the environment and information in the minds of people, it is possible later to reconstruct the features of the fire with varying degrees of completeness.

Most fires occur under conditions of non-obviousness, manifesting themselves as the result of careless actions or criminal negligence of certain persons, arson. Rarely, fires occur under the uncontrolled influence of the forces of nature (sunlight, lightning, electrostatic electricity), but even in such cases, the very fact of a fire and its consequences can be identified guilty persons who have not performed the appropriate preventive measures. Among these causes of fires, arson takes an insignificant place and is most often committed on the basis of revenge; to hide another crime (murder, misappropriation of another's property, etc.); for political reasons - in order to destabilize the situation in the region, city; from hooligan promptings; in order to obtain economic benefits (insurance premiums, grants); to improve housing conditions.

Criminal violations of the rules - one of the most common causes of fires. Usually it concerns the rules of operation of electrical installations, heating, lighting, heating devices and equipment, technology for the manufacture and use, storage and transportation of flammable and explosive materials, violations in fire protection systems, rules for fire, explosive and other fire hazardous types, careless handling of fire ( for example, when smoking).

It should be emphasized that the line between unintentional and deliberately organized fires can be very thin.

Thus, in the trade enterprise during the documentary audit, two inspectors and the director of this company worked at the same table; all three were smoking, and cigarette butts were thrown at an urn near the table. At lunchtime, everyone went into the dining room, and when they returned 50 minutes later, they saw that the building where they were was filled with flames. As it was found out during the judicial fire-technical expertise, the fire arose from a burning cigarette butt, but it was not possible to establish who of the three who attended it, and whether he did it intentionally or accidentally.

In the practice of civil proceedings, both in courts of general jurisdiction and in arbitration courts during the consideration of claims for the need to make various payments related to fires, it is not uncommon to identify criminal acts or omissions of persons who may qualify as criminal offenses. We illustrate this with a typical example.

The company Burevestnik LLC has entered into a contract on insurance against a warehouse warehouse fire with the Azalia insurance company (the names of the organizations have been changed). Two weeks later, a fire occurred in the warehouse, however, since the fuel load (objects stored in the warehouse) were not placed in the way that the insurance contract provided, the insurance company Azalia refused to refill Burevestnik LLC to pay the sum insured. LLC Petrel has filed a lawsuit with the arbitral tribunal. In preparing the case for trial in accordance with paragraph. 3 h. 1 Article. 135 AIC. since the need for expert opinion was evident from the circumstances of the case, a judicial fire and technical expertise was appointed. During the examination, an expert inspection was carried out, a source of fire was identified, fire debris and unburned fragments of the elements of the material situation were investigated. The expert compared the results obtained with the information contained in the documentation on the warehouse, which made it possible to come to a categorical conclusion: the goods stored in the warehouse burned down almost completely. However, the number of these products included refrigerators, televisions, stereos, computers containing many non-combustible metal parts. From this it was concluded that this property was not in stock. The fire, according to the findings of the examination, was due to the entry of an open source of fire and was qualified by the court as arson. Subsequently, a criminal case was initiated under art. 159 of the Criminal Code "Fraud".

One of the specific aspects of the examination consists in the need not only to investigate objects found at the site of the fire, but also to analyze the technical documentation of the burned object and its equipment, to generalize information about the circumstances of the occurrence, detection and development of the fire until it is eliminated, to carry out calculations during the fire, and synthesize the collected information to solve the questions posed to the expert. Only in this way can one obtain the necessary information to restore the process of the emergence and development of a fire as a whole phenomenon and to give answers to questions of interest to the court.