Lawyer's request for preparing a lawsuit: the SC reiterated the importance of timeliness

A lawyer’s request may serve as a means of obtaining the information necessary to prepare a lawsuit. However, such a request must be made in a timely manner: any delay in taking steps to prepare the lawsuit is taken into account by the court when assessing compliance with the deadline for filing the request.

In Case No. 520/25416/25, a man challenged the method used to calculate his financial compensation. After being discharged from the State Emergency Service, he was provided with a financial statement in March 2025. However, this document did not contain detailed information about the components of his financial compensation for the disputed period or the calculation method used.

Therefore, the advocate submitted a request for this information to the plaintiff’s former employer. However, this was not done until August. A month later, upon receiving the response, the advocate filed a lawsuit. The advocate argued that the three-month deadline for filing a lawsuit should be calculated from the date the response was received, since that was when the plaintiff first learned of the calculation method used.

The case reached the Supreme Court. The court agreed that the pay stub did not contain all the information necessary for the plaintiff. At the same time, by its legal nature, it is a document confirming the final settlement and contains information about the amounts accrued and paid upon termination of employment. Therefore, it is precisely this document that constitutes a written notice within the meaning of Part 2 of Article 233 of the Labor Code, the receipt of which marks the start of the three-month period for filing a lawsuit.

Any other interpretation, in the opinion of the judges of the court of cassation, would allow a person, after receiving such a document, to take no action to obtain additional information for an unlimited period of time, and subsequently to submit a request and, from the date of receiving a response, to have an additional three months to file a lawsuit. Such an approach would negate the essence of the statutory time limit.

Therefore, the three-month period must also include the time from the date of receiving the document confirming the final settlement until the performance of other legally significant actions aimed at preparing and filing a lawsuit. During this period, the dismissed employee must obtain the necessary information regarding compensation and, if necessary, file a lawsuit.

Since the plaintiff failed to substantiate valid reasons for not seeking the necessary information more than five months after reviewing the pay stub, the Supreme Court, in its ruling dated June 25, 2026, deemed the deadline for filing a lawsuit to have been missed and dismissed the cassation appeal.