About the claim of the Minister of Education Natalia Mikhalchenkova against the Internet magazine “7x7” and “Red Banner”: what it was

On April 17, 2017, the City Court of Syktyvkar rejected the lawsuit of the Minister of Education of Komi Natalya Mikhalchenkova to protect the honor and dignity filed against the 7x7 Internet magazine and the Red Banner website. The essence of the claim and the course of the trial - briefly.

What's happened

On March 2, 2016 , the Material “Formula Rubik-Dzhana” was published on the Red Banner website. It stated that “almost 40% of his dissertation Mikhalchenkov [at that time held the post of acting Rector of Syktyvkar State University] ... just wrote off. " The conclusion on the originality of the dissertation No. 270216-1, on the basis of which the article is written, contains eight pages of text. The site published a cover letter from the expert and analytical center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. On March 2, 2016, the Internet magazine “ 7x7 ” wrote news on the basis of this text and also published the conclusion of the expert center.

What is said in the conclusion about the dissertation of Mikhalchenkova

Natalya Mikhalchenkova defended the dissertation on the topic “Formation of the quality system of an educational organization based on the integration of the quality guaranteeing models” at the Tambov Technical University in 2007. The conclusion of the Expert and Analytical Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences of this work was made at the request of the Red Banner website and dated February 27, 2016. It says that the dissertation has a low degree of originality: the text is copyrighted by 62.25%, with the exception of correct borrowing. When writing work, Natalya Mikhalchenkova used methodological recommendations from three sources and quoted the dissertation by V.V. Azaryeva "Development of methods for managing the quality of scientific and innovative potential of the organization using technology for functional modeling processes."

How the acting reacted Rector Mikhalchenkov

The day after the publication to the editorial office of 7x7 , the SyktSU public relations department received a request to refute plagiarism information. One of the paragraphs of the requirements concerned the current system for checking the use of borrowed material. According to the author of the dissertation, it does not allow us to make an unambiguous conclusion that textual coincidence is an unfair borrowing. In turn, “ 7x7 ” asked Ms. Mikhalchenkov to clarify that it was from what was written in the article that she demands to refute. Representatives of Mikhalchenkova did not give an answer to this question, the correspondence was over.

On November 3, 2016, Natalya Mikhalchenkova was appointed by the decree of the head of the republic to the post of Minister of Education of Komi. In mid -December, she filed a lawsuit to protect honor and dignity against four publications published data on her dissertation. The official demanded to delete articles from the website Progorod11.ru, Jodda.ru, and from the Red Banner and the 7x7 Internet magazine, in addition, to recover 1.5 million rubles. In equal shares.

How the case developed

At a court meeting on December 19, 2016, the security side of the 7x7 Internet magazine and the Red Banner website asked to postpone the meeting in mid-January 2017 to get acquainted with the case materials. At a meeting on March 21, a lawyer of the media protection center Svetlana Kuzevanova (representing the interests " 7x7 ") and lawyer Alexander Kikot (representing the interests of the “Red Banner”) stated that they did not agree with the claims, since the plaintiff’s side did not indicate which words or phrases are defamatory, and the texts contained well -known facts and evaluative judgments. Kuzevanov’s lawyer, in particular, referred to Article 152 of the Civil Code of Russia (“Protection of honor, dignity and business reputation”). According to paragraphs 1 and 5 of this article, the plaintiff may demand to refute and remove only specific phrases. She recalled that a public face should be tolerant of criticism. Also, the side of protection doubted the fairness of the requirements for monetary compensation, since the facts of the incurred moral suffering and evidence of the causal relationship between them and the publications were absent.

Now, the plaintiff's party asked about the transfer of the meeting to agree on a position with Natalya Mikhalchenkova. But after three weeks, on April 14, neither the minister itself nor its representative came to the meeting. The judge announced that he would make a decision three days later.

On April 17, after the end of the trial, after the debate at the stage of the parties, the representative of the plaintiff Ekaterina Pleshkina made an attempt to attach to the materials of the case of clarification of the claims, which stated that borrowing in the dissertation of Mikhalchenkova is often repeated stable expressions, the names of institutions, terms, citation of the text and excerination from documents, phras The names of publications, conferences, names of legal entities and individuals. The court refused to the Minister Mikhalchenkova to satisfy the claims in full.