CONCLUSIONS

1. In March of 2020, due to the threat of the Covid-19 virus, many countries introduced lockdowns and a number of restrictions for business and public life. During the quarantine period, sales and services largely shifted to a remote mode. This situation naturally led to an increase in consumer complaints. The Lithuanian government, like authorities in other countries around the world, sought urgent measures to save jobs and local economies by helping the most vulnerable business sectors deal with quarantine problems. Some legislative initiatives were introduced stipulating that under special circumstances, such as the coronavirus, limitations for the protection of consumer rights (such as vouchers for cancelled travel, prolonged terms of compensation, etc,) would come into effect. Not long afterwards, the European Commission launched infringement proceedings against 10 Member States including Lithuania, as its provisions may violate the rights of passengers established under EU legislation, namely EU Directive 2015/2302 of the European Parliament and the Council of 25 November 2015 on package travel and linked travel arrangements. As a response, seeking to avoid this procedure, Lithuania rescinded the regulation.

2. As during the quarantine period, contracts, sales, and services for the most part shifted

to online venues, customers often complained about unfair terms of such online contracts because they had no possibility to negotiate or otherwise influence their clauses.

Furthermore, as in most cases, online contracts are excessively long and complex, and so customers are discouraged from reading the terms. This raises the question of the consumer’s lack of meaningful consent. Because of the asymmetries of knowledge and power between parties to the contract – the corporation and the customer – online contracts could be regarded as a moral and democratic degradation of the rule of law and the institution of contract.

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3. One more related challenge to the digitalised society of recent years for customers is the risks stemming from smart devices and/or smart technology-based services. Customers, using these products and services, complain about lack of information, unclear or imbalanced responsibility for damage in the event of improper exploitation, and risk of lost or stolen personal data. In terms of privacy as a protected right, it is obvious that possible harm to humans does not have to be physical, and so smart technologies raise unprecedented privacy concerns. Furthermore, smart technologies are increasingly based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology, with its human-like skills such as learning, speech recognition, automated reasoning, sensing, interaction, problem solving, and creativity.

Also, the growing availability of smart technologies to the wider public and the development of participatory models in the economy and other social spheres such as social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb, Task Rabbit), and cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum) are also challenging the system of customer protection. However, the extant legal framework related to product liability is likely to become inadequate as commercially available AI machines become more sophisticated and autonomous, eventually blurring the lines between the responsibilities of manufacturers and sellers and those of users.

4. Covid-19 is unfortunately only one of a number of recent major global crises. The war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, the digitalization of services and products, climate change, massive migration, inflation, are other crises and challenges that have touched each of us and will further influence our lives in the immediate and long-term future. The unifying factor of these crises and challenges is unpredictability. On the one hand, a contract, including consumer contracts, should create security and predictability for both parties.

However, when the world is hit by various crises at the same time, states and businesses may not always be able to bear the full cost of a crisis.

5. The challenges related to the unpredictability of crises, shifting to digital spaces and the growing impact of smart technologies, for example, generate issues related to functioning in regulatory uncertainty and inadequate or insufficient legal regulation, and to the idea that legal concepts and instruments, which were developed in a print culture, may be ineffective in the internet age.

[2] “Perlas Energija Naikina Fiksuotus Planus, VERT Perspėja Laikytis Sutarčių Sąlygų - Verslo Žinios”, https://www.vz.lt/pramone/energetika/2022/08/05/perlas-energija-pasirinkusieji-fiksuotas-kainas-bus-perkelti-i-kintamos-kainos-plana.

[3] Fresh Media, “About Service | State Consumer Rights Protection Authority,” About Service | State Consumer Rights Protection Authority, accessed August 19, 2022, https://www.vvtat.lt/en/about-service/541.

[4] Case A-204-756/2019

[5] For example in case e2A-119-544/2021 the plaintiff entered into a tourism services contract with the defendant travel provider, according to which the plaintiff’s family of four individuals had to go to a Turkish resort. The plaintiff paid for the trip. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, all the trips were cancelled and the plaintiff’s trip to Turkey did not take place. The plaintiff sent an email to the defendant requesting a refund, but his money was

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not refunded. In this case the Court of Appeal overruled part of the decision of the court of first instance by which the defendant was ordered to refund the money no later than 90 days from the date on which the restrictions which made it impossible to perform the tourism services agreement disappeared. The court stated that the provision of Paragraph 5 of Article 6.751 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania, which establishes a three-month refund period, is incompatible with Directive 2015/2302 and in principle contradicts its provisions. The defendant was required to honour the contract and to refund money paid for the trip within 14 days of the termination of the contract.

[6] Fresh Media, “Pandemijos laikotarpiu - rekordinis vartotojų skundų skaičius | VVTAT,” Pandemijos laikotarpiu - rekordinis vartotojų skundų skaičius | VVTAT, accessed August 19, 2022, https://www.vvtat.lt/informacija-vartotojams-koronaviruso-laikotarpiu/677/pandemijos-laikotarpiu-rekordinis-vartotoju-skundu-skaicius:1413.

[7] Resolution of the State Consumer Rights Protection Agency in the case “Del UAB “Silicio biotechnologijos,”

2020-08-20 No. 12R-44; Resolution of the State Consumer Rights Protection Agency in the case “Del UAB

“Mosus,” 2020-06-10 No. 12R-30;

[8] Law on Consumer Rights Protection/ Lietuvos Respublikos vartotojų teisių apsaugos įstatymas (Žin., 1994, Nr. 94-1833; 2000, Nr. 85-2581; 2007, Nr. 12-488)

[9] “Vartotojų teisių tarnyba: 'Perlas Energijos' sutarties sąlygos nesąžiningos,” lrt.lt, accessed August 11, 2022, https://www.lrt.lt/naujienos/verslas/4/1758635/vartotoju-teisiu-tarnyba-perlas-energijos-sutarties-salygos-nesaziningos.

[10] The company “Perlas Energija” has informed all customers that as of August 31 of 2022, it is ceasing its activities as an independent electricity supplier. “Nepriklausomas energijos tiekėjas 'Perlas Energija' nutraukia veiklą: ESO pataria, ką daryti toliau,” 15min.lt/verslas, accessed August 22, 2022, https://www.15min.lt/verslas/naujiena/energetika/nepriklausomas-energijos-tiekejas-perlas-energija-nutraukia-veikla-eso-pataria-ka-daryti-toliau-664-1918110.

[11] Cases e3K-3-130-611/2021, e2A-873-330/2021, and e3K-3-337-403/2021.

[12] In case e3K-3-337-403/2021, the court ruled that clause 135.9 of the insurance rules stipulates that the consumer (policyholder) must prove that he will restore the destroyed property in the future and the obligation of the entrepreneur (insurer) to honour the contract depends only on the will of the entrepreneur; the insurer decides unilaterally whether the policyholder has proved that he will restore the destroyed property in the future. In addition, the court noted that such a provision gives the entrepreneur (insurer) the exclusive right to interpret the contract; the policyholder must prove to the insurer that he will restore the buildings that were destroyed during the insured event, and the insurer has the exclusive right to decide whether this evidence is sufficient. Therefore, the procedure for calculating and paying the insurance benefit depends exclusively on the will of one of the parties of the contract: the insurer. Additional conditions imposed by the insurer when such a method of calculating the indemnity cannot be applied and the nature of such insurance protection not properly disclosed to the consumer distorts the balance of rights and interests of the parties to the detriment of the consumer.

[13] In case, e2A-873-330/2021, the court found that the Property Insurance Rules provide for two methods of compensation to the policyholder for damage to the property, but the unilateral right to choose the method of compensation belongs to the insurer. In one or another method of compensation, the amount of the insurance benefit differs significantly. In the case of indemnity by way of monetary compensation, the insurance indemnity is calculated from the replacement value of the building minus the amount corresponding to the depreciation of the damaged building before the insured event. When applying the indemnification by way of restoration of the building, the degree of depreciation of the building is not calculated. The court found that the provisions of the Property Insurance Rules, gives the insurance company an absolute and unconditional right to choose one or another method of compensation and the amount of the insurance benefit may vary several times depending on the insurer’s unilateral choice of the method of compensation. Moreover, the policyholder who is the consumer can have no influence on the choice of insurance company.

[14] In case e3K-3-130-611/2021, the court found that the contractual clause for the plaintiff to install an additional car security system was set out in the annex to the insurance policy and not in the insurance contract (or insurance policy). The court held that the condition relating to the installation of the additional security system set out in the annex to the insurance policy had not been individually discussed and that the applicant could not influence the preparation of that condition. The plaintiff was provided with a standard contract and was not told

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how the installed factory security system correlated with the requirement to install an additional vehicle security system and how that alters the terms of the insurance contract. For that reason, the court considered that the condition relating to the installation of the additional vehicle security system set out in the annex to the insurance policy had not been properly explained to the applicant and had not been expressed in a clear and comprehensible manner.

[15] Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2020), 51–53, 209–11.

[16] Zuboff, 52.

[17] Zuboff, 209–11.

[18] Zuboff, 211.

[19] In case e2A-772-794/2021, the defects of the goods were caused by the buyer (consumer) who improperly maintained the purchased goods; however, the court found that the product provider who has failed or improperly fulfilled the obligation to provide information about maintenance of the goods to the consumer shall be liable for the losses incurred by the consumer despite the fact that defects of the goods appeared because of the consumer’s improper care of the product.

[20] Mireille Hildebrandt, Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law: Novel Entanglements of Law and Technology (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015), 140-218.

[21] In terms of the impact of language technology on societal development, Bart argues that feudalism began with the emergence of written language, which was invented and started to develop more than 5,000 years ago. It was at this time that the world was also blessed with the first formalised world religions—Zoroastrianism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, and Judaism—and the first documented philosophy. With capitalism came the golden age of the printed and mass-distributed ideologies. Capital was set in motion after the breakthrough of the bank note press in the seventeenth century. With the arrival of capital, for the first time in history the symbol became even more important than what it claimed to represent. Capitalism’s industries also demanded a constantly increasing level of education among the general public. However, when the internet arrived with full force in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that society was endowed with an environment in which holism and generalism were fostered at the expense of the academic world’s atomism and specialism. The informationist paradigm was characterised by a narrative of the developing information, communication, and network society, by interactivity as the dominant form of communication, by the cyber world as the geographical arena, and by attention rather than capital as the driving force of the economy. Alexander Bard and Jan Soderqvist, Syntheism:

Creating God in the Internet Age (Stockholm: Stockholm Text, 2014), 58-79.

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SOME NEW NUANCES OF FAIRNESS IN CONSUMER LAW