- Someone was responsible for the object that damaged your car, and it is not always the municipality. The party whose object it is pays: for the asphalt, the road's manager (the community in a city or village, the ministry on an interstate road); for a manhole, the water, electricity, gas or telecom operator; for a dug trench, whoever is doing the works.
- The defendant decides the court, and the court decides how hard the case is. Against a state body or a community it is the Administrative Court and two claims in sequence: first have the inaction declared unlawful, only then ask for the money. Against a private company it is a single civil claim, and there the company is the one that has to prove it was not at fault.
- A parked car is a separate case. If the car was standing still and a sign, a branch or a sheet of ice fell on it, this is not a road traffic accident: there will be no accident protocol, and you gather the evidence yourself.
- Damage is proved by expert examination, not by a garage estimate. Three answers are needed: what caused the damage, what exactly was damaged, and what that is worth in drams.
- The whole case rests on two numbers: your speed, and the distance at which you saw the defect. You will be asked for them at the scene and they will be recalculated by the expert, so an invented number kills the case.
- This is slow and expensive. Around 200,000 AMD of damage usually means around 400,000 AMD of costs and three to four years of waiting. If you win, the costs are recovered from the losing side.
- The deadline is three years, but once the body refuses you in writing, only two months remain to reach the court.
Everything below follows in order: whether this is a road traffic accident (which decides how the scene must be recorded), what to do at the scene, who your defendant is, which court to go to, what expert examinations are needed, and what all of it costs.
Is it a road traffic accident, or something else?
Everything downstream depends on this, so settle it first.
Article 2 of the Law on Road Traffic Safety defines a road traffic accident as "an event occurring during and with the participation of a vehicle's movement on a road, as a result of which people were killed or injured, or vehicles, cargo or structures were damaged, or other material damage was caused". No second vehicle and no guilty driver is required - but movement is.
- Your car was moving when it dropped into a pothole, hit an open manhole, went into an unfenced trench or struck debris left on the carriageway. That is a road traffic accident, and the full procedure below applies: police, protocols, site scheme.
- Your car was parked when a road sign, an advertising panel, a branch, masonry or ice came down on it, or when a digger working next to it damaged it. That is not a road traffic accident. There is no statutory accident protocol for it, and your evidence has to be built differently - see "If your parked car was damaged".
What to do at the scene of a road accident
Article 24, part 2, point "դ" of the Law on Road Traffic Safety obliges a driver involved in an accident to stop immediately and not move the vehicle, switch on the hazard lights, place the "Emergency Stop" sign, leave the objects and traces untouched and not change the vehicle's position relative to road infrastructure - and then to act under parts 4 and 4.1 of the same article.
Part 4.1 is where most drivers get it wrong, because it now tells you to do the opposite of "leave everything as it is" - after you have recorded the scene:
- Stop, hazard lights on, warning triangle out - at least 15 metres behind the car inside a built-up area, 30 metres outside one (traffic rules, points 22-23).
- Notify the police on 102. Say the words "road traffic accident" and name the cause: a pothole, an open manhole, an unfenced trench.
- Record the scene by photo and video before you touch anything. Article 24, part 4.1, point 1 requires you to fix the position of the vehicles relative to each other and to road-infrastructure objects, the traces, the objects, and the damage to the vehicles or other property. Shoot wide with a landmark in frame, then the wheel in the hole, then the hole alone with a tape measure or a phone for scale, then every damaged part, then the whole section from the direction you were driving.
- Then move the car out of the way within 15 minutes of the accident. The same provision requires it, unless moving it is objectively impossible - the damage is such that operating the vehicle is prohibited or impossible - or the accident happened somewhere that obstructs nobody.
- Save the dashcam file immediately to a second device. Loop recording overwrites it within hours, and it is the strongest evidence you will ever hold in this case.
- Wait for the police and take the contacts of any witness, including the driver who stopped behind you.
- Read the protocols and the site scheme before you sign. You are entitled to have your own remarks entered. Do not sign anything that records you as at fault, and do not waive the accident proceedings to save time: in case ՎԴ/9342/05/17 exactly that signature ended the claim years later, because no expert conclusion was ever produced to displace it.
Steps 3 and 4 are in that order in the law, and swapping them is the mistake that costs the case. Once the car is on the shoulder, nothing proves where it was, which lane the hole is in, or how the wheel sat in it. Fifteen minutes is enough to shoot everything if you start with the wide shot.
The two protocols, and the one that matters most
Under article 24, part 4.3 the police, having secured traffic safety, collect data on the participants, their vehicles and the circumstances, and draw up two documents:
- the protocol on the accident (`պատահարի մասին արձանագրություն`), and
- the protocol on the technical baseline data of the accident's circumstances (`պատահարի հանգամանքների տեխնիկական ելակետային տվյալների մասին արձանագրություն`).
The form of the accident protocol and the requirements for the composition and structure of the technical baseline data are approved by the Chief of Police in agreement with the Central Bank of Armenia. Those protocols, and every document, video, photograph or other material connected with the accident, may be passed to the Armenian Motor Insurers' Bureau, its member insurers, and third parties for the purposes of settling compensation.
The two numbers: your speed and the sighting distance
The defence is always the same - you should have seen it and slowed down - and it has a statutory basis. Point 65 of the traffic rules requires a speed that accounts for "the condition of the road surface and visibility in the direction of travel". Point 66 requires a speed that keeps the vehicle fully under control. Point 67 says that when an obstacle or danger arises that the driver was able to detect, the driver must reduce speed up to stopping. Civil Code article 1076, part 2 then lets the court cut the award in proportion to the victim's gross negligence.
The auto-technical expert answers that with arithmetic: at your speed, what was the stopping distance, and did the defect become visible from farther away than that? If the broken section became distinguishable at 20 metres and your stopping distance was longer than 20 metres, you had no technical possibility of preventing the accident and the negligence argument collapses. If it was visible at 100 metres and you were doing 40 km/h, so does your claim.
"Sighting distance" is not a loose word here. Article 2 of the Law on Road Traffic Safety defines `տեսանելիության հեռավորություն` as the distance from an observation point at the height of the driver's seat to a visible object at the same height - measured from your eyes, at road level, to the thing you could actually make out.
Sighting distance is where the defect actually became distinguishable, not where it was theoretically inside your headlight beam. At night, on wet asphalt, on an unlit road, a water-filled hole is invisible until it is very close, and saying so is both true and useful. Drivers routinely overstate this figure, vaguely afraid that a short distance sounds careless. It is the opposite: the shorter the honest distance, the stronger your case.
Speed works the other way. Understating it out of caution shortens your calculated stopping distance and makes the defect look avoidable. Give the actual figure. And note what "within the limit" means: the limit is what the sign says. The 10 km/h subtracted under article 124.4, part 6 of the Code of Administrative Offences is a correction for a speed-measuring device's possible error, applied to a radar or camera reading. It is not a legal margin, and it does not exist at all when you are telling an officer what speed you were doing.
The expert cross-checks your stated speed against the dashcam, the braking marks and the damage pattern, and the other side's lawyer does the same. A figure your own footage contradicts does not merely fail - it discredits the rest of your account.
If your parked car was damaged
A sign, an advertising panel, a branch, a piece of a cornice or a sheet of ice landing on a stationary car is not a road traffic accident, so there is no accident protocol, no site scheme and no technical baseline data. Nothing else about the claim changes: someone was responsible for that object, and the same tort rules apply.
- Do not clear anything away. The object that fell is the single best piece of evidence about who owned it and why it came down.
- Call 102 and ask for the incident to be registered, and for the scene to be recorded. There is no statutory form here, so what you get is a report and whatever the officers write down - which is exactly why your own record has to be thorough.
- Photograph the object where it lies, the damage, the car's position, the structure it came off, and any visible reason it failed - rust, a snapped bracket, an unrepaired mount, an open excavation beside it.
- Identify the owner from the object itself. Utility manhole covers, cabinets and poles carry the operator's marking; advertising panels carry a permit number; a construction site carries the developer's information board.
- Collect the neighbours' footage. Building and shop cameras overwrite in days, so ask the same day and in writing.
- Get an expert conclusion on what caused the damage and what it is worth, exactly as for a road accident.
If the object belonged to a state body or a community, the order of the two claims still binds you. A lighting pole and a tree that came down on a parked Nissan X-Trail cost their owner his whole case for that reason in ՎԴ/10468/05/24 - see "Do not go straight for the money" below.
Who pays: the map of possible defendants
The rule is simple to state and takes work to apply: the party that owed a duty over the object that damaged your car pays, not whoever happens to own the land around it.
- The road surface - potholes, subsidence, missing road markings, a road sign that fell from its post - is the road manager's, but which law says so depends on the road. On the state network the Law on Motor Roads applies: article 15 puts "the complex of care and maintenance works" and the equipping of roads with road signs on the manager, and article 18 states that damage caused to road users by the defective condition of motor roads is compensated. Article 4 places general-use state roads under the state administration body authorised by the Government - in practice the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure, the defendant in the cases below - and expressly excludes the transit sections of interstate and republican roads that run through Yerevan, so an M-road inside the capital is not automatically the ministry's.
- An ordinary city or village street is outside that law altogether. Article 1, part 2 of the Law on Motor Roads excludes settlement streets that are not part of a road in the approved register, and part 3 sends them to urban-planning legislation. There the duty is the community's: article 12, part 1, point 10 and article 44, part 1 of the Law on Local Self-Government, and in the capital article 45, part 1, point 1 of the Law on Local Self-Government in the City of Yerevan, which makes the Mayor organise the construction, maintenance and operation of city-significance roads. The claim itself then runs on Civil Code articles 1058 and 1063, not on article 18 of the Law on Motor Roads.
- A manhole, a chamber, a valve or a cable in the road belongs to the utility that owns it, not to the road. Article 12, part 3 of the Law on Motor Roads requires the utility lines and other structures situated in the right-of-way of general-use state roads to be kept in proper condition - and the owner pays when they have to be moved or rebuilt for a reconstruction or repair of the road - while part 4 requires organisations and individuals to carry out all works on general-use motor roads on terms agreed with the road manager. On an ordinary city street that article does not reach, and the answer there is ownership of the object plus the ordinary tort rules. In practice that means the water and sewerage operator (Veolia Jur CJSC), the electricity distribution company (Electric Networks of Armenia CJSC), the gas distribution company, or a telecom operator - all of them companies, so all of them civil-court defendants. Electric Networks of Armenia is the one to check before you file: it has been run by a state-appointed temporary manager since July 2025 and the Government moved in 2026 to take its shares into state ownership, but it is still a closed joint-stock company and not an administrative body.
- An open or unfenced excavation, a trench, a spoil heap, an unrestored patch of asphalt belongs to whoever is doing the works. Failing to restore the road bed, road furniture or technical communications damaged by earth or construction works within the right-of-way of general-use state roads is an administrative offence in its own right: 200,000 AMD on interstate roads and 100,000 AMD on republican and regional roads, under article 150.10, part 4 of the Code of Administrative Offences, doubled for a repeat within a year.
- Obstacles left on the carriageway - construction materials, objects, a dirtied road surface - are covered by article 140, part 1 of the same code: 75,000 AMD. Carrying out construction works on the road without the required permission or in breach of it is another 75,000 AMD under part 2.
- An advertising structure, a shop awning, a cornice, ice from a roof belongs to the owner or the manager of that structure or building.
- A tree or a branch belongs to whoever owns or maintains the green area - usually the community for a street planting.
A hole around a sunken manhole cover is the classic case: the cover is the utility's, the asphalt around it is the road manager's. You are not obliged to pick correctly on the first try - but because the two go to different courts, guessing costs you months. The cheapest way to settle it is a written request to the community or the road manager asking who owns and maintains that specific object at that specific address; the answer is a document you can put in front of the court.
Where the two overlap, claimants sue both at once. In the civil case ԵԴ2/7903/02/25 the claimant asked for 13,380,000 AMD jointly and severally from Veolia Jur CJSC and the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure, plus statutory interest under Civil Code article 411 and the 401,400 AMD of state duty already paid. In ԵԴ2/11198/02/24 a company claimed 1,963,000 AMD from Veolia Jur for the damage an accident had caused it.
There is one duty a utility's ownership can never absorb, and it is the most reliable claim a manhole gives you. In case ՎԴ/10905/05/23 the Yerevan Mayor had refused the driver (decision N 4172-Ա of 18 December 2023) on the ground that manholes belong to Veolia Jur, to the Water Committee or to their owners, are not on the municipality's balance sheet and are not serviced by it. On 14 October 2024 the Administrative Court held that none of that was the question. The dispute was not who owns the chamber, nor whose fault it was that it stood open, but which body had to put a sign in front of it - and since the 2019 amendment took the duty to install road signs away from the Police, every road sign in Yerevan can and must be installed by the Mayor. The failure to place warning sign 1.33, "Other dangers", before an open manhole on Admiral Isakov avenue at 21:45 was declared unlawful, with the 10,000 AMD state duty and 100,000 AMD of representative's fees against the community.
The rule cuts both ways in time. For an accident on 27 August 2019, before that amendment took effect, the same claim ran against the Police instead: on 6 October 2020, in ՎԴ/9510/05/19, the Administrative Court declared unlawful the Road Police's failure to put up the "Main road" and "Secondary road" signs at the Sasuntsi Davit-Burnazyan crossing, with 4,000 AMD of state duty and 30,000 AMD of representative's fees against it. Whoever owed the duty on the day, a missing sign is a claim that wins.
So an open manhole gives you two separate targets: the owner of the chamber, for the chamber, and the road authority, for the missing sign. Only the second is immune to every argument about whose pipe it is.
Article 21 of the Law on Road Traffic Safety puts three duties on whoever is responsible for a road and its engineering structures: keep it in a condition safe for traffic, take immediate measures to remove a hazard - restricting or prohibiting traffic on that section if that is what it takes - and tell road users about the change. Part 2 adds that a work site on the road, along with the machines, materials and structures standing on it, must be marked with road signs and with guiding or fencing devices, and at night or in poor visibility lit with red or yellow signal lights. Part 3 requires safe traffic to be restored immediately once the works end.
So photograph what was not there as well: no warning sign, no fence, no lights. That absence is a claim of its own, and it wins. On 10 March 2026, in case ՎԴ/3892/05/24, the Administrative Court declared unlawful the Yerevan Municipality's failure to put up warning sign 1.16, "Uneven road", which the traffic rules define as the sign for a carriageway section with unevenness, at Komitas avenue 38/3, where the driver's accident had happened at 00:48 on 23 July 2023. The municipality was made to pay his 10,000 AMD of state duty, the 36,000 AMD the court-appointed examination cost and 300,000 AMD of lawyer's fees. The four findings behind that judgment are the four things your own file has to establish: a dangerous unevenness was there at the time; no warning sign told drivers about it; the duty to remove or mark it lay with that body; and the failure to perform it stood in direct causal connection with the accident.
Road works carry their own numbers, and it is worth knowing them before you start shooting. Outside a built-up area the warning sign goes up 150-300 metres before the hazardous section and inside one 50-100 metres, and signs 1.25 "Road works" are repeated outside built-up areas, the second one not less than 50 metres before the hazard. A hole the works have opened also calls for the 4.2.1-4.2.3 "Obstacle bypass" signs together with the 8.22.1-8.22.3 "Obstacle" plates. That is what won ՎԴ1/1059/05/24 on 6 November 2025: a car was wrecked at 04:20 on an unlit, unmarked repair section of the H-46 Goris-Shinuhayr road, and the twelve photographs and the video the owner filed with his claim are what proved the signs were not there. The ministry paid his 10,000 AMD duty and 70,000 AMD of the 300,000 AMD he had contracted with his lawyer.
The forum, and why it changes your case
This is the difference the procedure hinges on, and it is worth reading twice.
If the defendant is a state body or a community
An administrative route, in two steps. First a written claim to the body itself - article 100 of the Law on the Fundamentals of Administrative Action requires the compensation demand to go to the administrative body whose action or inaction caused the damage, and article 31 sets the form: your name and address, the body's name, the demand, the list of attachments, the date, your signature. Article 46 gives that body 30 calendar days from registration to decide, extendable under article 47 by up to 10 days twice if it needs further documents from you, and for as long as it takes if it commissions its own expert conclusion under article 45.
Then the court, because article 96 is absolute: no compensation is paid while the act, action or inaction that caused the damage has not been recognised unlawful in the established manner. Since the Cassation Court's decision of 3 December 2010 in ՎԴ/0277/05/09 that has meant two separate proceedings in a fixed order - a claim to have the inaction declared unlawful, and only then, after the body refuses your written demand, a claim for the sum. Before the body the burden is yours - article 43, part 1, point "a" puts the proof of facts favourable to you on you. In court it is divided: article 29 of the Administrative Procedure Code gives the body the facts behind its refusal on an obligation claim and the lawfulness of what it did or failed to do on a recognition claim, and leaves you the facts that ground the act you want. That division reads better on paper than it works in the room - the claims dismissed below were all dismissed for want of the claimant's own evidence.
If the defendant is a private company
A single civil claim in the court of general jurisdiction, and two rules make it a much better position than the administrative route.
Article 1058, part 2 of the Civil Code puts the burden on the other side: "the person who caused the damage is released from compensating it if they prove that the damage was not caused through their fault". You prove the damage, the object and the causal link; they have to prove they were not at fault.
Article 1072 removes fault entirely for works. It lists, among sources of increased danger, "the carrying out of construction and other activity connected with it", alongside transport, mechanisms, high-voltage energy and explosives. Whoever conducts that activity must compensate the damage it causes unless they prove force majeure or the victim's intent. Being careful is not a defence; only an irresistible force or your deliberate act is. The court can still reduce the award for your gross negligence under article 1076, parts 2 and 3.
Civil Code article 17 sets what you can claim - full compensation of the losses, meaning the expenditure needed to restore the right and the loss of or damage to the property. Article 1062 makes a company answer for the damage its employees cause in performing their duties, so "it was the crew, not us" is not an answer. Article 1075 lets the court order repair in kind instead of cash.
- Administrative Court: a flat 10,000 AMD - ten times the 1,000 AMD base duty, under article 9, part 2, point 1 of the Law on State Duty. It does not scale with the damage, and you pay it once for the unlawfulness claim and again for the compensation claim. An appeal is 20,000 AMD.
- Civil court: 3% of the amount claimed, but not less than 6,000 AMD and not more than 25,000,000 AMD - article 9, part 1, point 1, sub-point "a". On 200,000 AMD of damage that is 6,000 AMD.
- Costs follow the outcome in both. In the Administrative Court, article 60, parts 3 and 10 of the Administrative Procedure Code put the court costs, including a reasonable representative's fee, on the Republic of Armenia or the community when the body's act, action or inaction is found unlawful. In the civil court, articles 105, 107 and 109 of the Civil Procedure Code make the expert fees and a lawyer's reasonable fee recoverable court costs, distributed in proportion to what the court awards.
- Ask for the fees in the claim. Neither court awards a representative's fee on its own initiative.
- Mandatory pre-court mediation applies only where a law prescribes it for that category of claim (Civil Procedure Code, article 122, part 1.1). Check whether yours is one before filing.
Which claim you file in the Administrative Court, and by when
The Administrative Procedure Code has named claim types, and a compensation demand fits exactly two of them:
- The body refused within the deadline - an obligation claim under article 67, asking the court to oblige the body to adopt the favourable administrative act awarding you the sum. Article 72, part 1, point 2 gives you two months from being informed of the refusal.
- The body stayed silent past the deadline - the act is deemed adopted under article 48 of the administrative-action law, and you file an action-performance claim under article 68, part 2. Article 72, part 1, point 3 gives you two months from the expiry of the deadline, or three months from the date you filed the application if neither earlier trigger applies.
- Name the sum in the claim itself. In case ՎԴ/5878/05/26, filed on 10 April 2026, the claimant asked the Administrative Court to oblige the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure to adopt a favourable act compensating 592,000 AMD of damage to his property caused by unlawful administrative action. The court accepted it on 15 April 2026, ordered the ministry to produce his application and the whole file within two weeks, and set the preliminary hearing for 10 November 2026.
Article 96 is a sequence, not a formality, and two cases show what happens when it is skipped.
In ՎԴ/4968/05/19 a driver asked the Administrative Court to oblige the Yerevan Municipality to adopt a favourable act compensating 400,000 AMD for the left-side tyres wrecked at 01:00 on 7 March 2019 in an unlit pothole on the road from Acharyan street to the Tbilisyan highway. He had applied to the municipality on 20 March 2019 and been refused on 19 April. It made no difference: on 3 February 2020 the court terminated the proceedings altogether, because the municipality's inaction had never been declared unlawful, so a compensation demand was not justiciable at all - and when his representative tried mid-case to change the claim into that declaration, the court refused to allow the change.
The same thing happened again six years later. In ՎԴ/10468/05/24, decided on 25 March 2026, a street-lighting pole and a tree came down on a Nissan X-Trail parked at Avanesov 7 on 16 May 2024, and the owner asked the court to oblige the municipality to pay for it. Dismissed, for exactly the same reason - with the court noting, as it is obliged to, that he remained free to sue for the declaration first and for the money afterwards.
Both rest on the Cassation Court's decision of 3 December 2010 in case ՎԴ/0277/05/09, which is what the judgments still cite: first have the act, action or inaction declared unlawful; then put the compensation demand to the body itself; and only if it refuses does a court hear the money claim. Two proceedings, in that order, every time. Applying to the body first is necessary and not sufficient.
On 21 January 2026, in case ՎԴ/15966/05/25, the Administrative Court rejected a compensation claim against the Yerevan Municipality without reaching the merits. The claimant had asked the court to "recognise the existence of the legal relationship of the fictitious administrative act" and to oblige the municipality to pay. The court returned the claim once, pointing out that a demand of this kind is an obligation claim or an action-performance claim, not a recognition claim. The claimant refiled the identical wording, and it was dismissed as manifestly unfounded under an accelerated procedure, with the costs left where they fell.
Under the Cassation Court's position in case ՎԴ/0229/05/15 of 20 July 2017, choosing the wrong claim type is not by itself a reason to refuse the claim, and the court must point out the proper one - but if you keep insisting on your original wording after it does, the court has to rule within the claim as you framed it, which is how a compensation demand dies without the merits ever being reached. Treat the court's first return of your claim as the free correction it is.
One file runs the whole route from end to end, and it reads better as a timetable than as a victory. At around 17:00 on 19 June 2016 a Toyota Camry pulling into a parking pocket on Abovyan street, at number 39, dropped its front right wheel into an open manhole at 20 km/h. The traffic police closed the administrative proceedings, finding no offence in the driver's conduct, and the Police forensic-criminalistics department valued the damage at 164,000 AMD in conclusion N 603-ԱՊ-16. In case ՎԴ/7703/05/16 the Administrative Court declared the municipality's failure to keep that manhole closed unlawful on 1 November 2017 - and that judgment became final only on 24 June 2020. On 27 August 2020 the driver applied to the municipality for his 164,000 AMD. Nothing was paid. So on 7 January 2022, in ՎԴ/5628/05/21, the court granted an obligation claim and ordered the municipality to adopt the favourable act paying the 164,000 AMD, along with 4,000 AMD of state duty and 60,000 AMD of the 100,000 AMD he had agreed with his lawyer.
Three things to take from it. The damage figure came from a police expert conclusion, not from anything he paid for. The 4,000 AMD was the non-property rate of the day - an Administrative Court claim is a flat 10,000 AMD now. And datalex still lists a hearing in that case on 16 September 2026, more than ten years after the wheel went in.
In its judgment of 6 November 2025 in case ՎԴ/5035/05/24 the Administrative Court declared unlawful the failure to remove, as of 26 March 2021, a hazard to traffic safety on the M-15 road within the boundaries of Arinj - the duty of immediate action in article 21, part 1 of the Law on Road Traffic Safety. The driver's BMW had lost three front suspension arms and two tyres there that night. The ministry argued that the section's maintenance was under contract with another company. The court answered that where the manager assigns the maintenance works to a company, it also bears the duty to supervise the progress and the results of those works, "bearing also the negative consequences thereof". The contract does not move the liability - though it does give you a second possible defendant.
The same answer came seven years earlier, with a sharper edge on the forum question. In ՎԴ/7577/05/18 a driver sued the Yerevan Municipality and the cleaning contractor Sanitek International LLC together over the snow and black ice left on Gyurjyan street on 27 January 2016. The Administrative Court refused to accept the claim against the company at all - a private company does not belong in that court - and on 11 December 2018 granted it against the municipality, holding that the Mayor answers for organising street cleaning "regardless of whose fault it was", that he may organise it through another organisation but that responsibility does not travel with the work, and that if he believes the contractor caused the damage his remedy is a claim in recourse against it in the civil court. That is the whole forum rule in one judgment: you sue the body, and the body sues its contractor.
The expert examinations you actually need
This is where most claims die. A repair estimate from a service centre is not an expert conclusion, and both an administrative body and a court will say so.
In decision N 1450-Ա of 18 April 2024, the Yerevan Mayor refused a pothole claim, listing exactly what the applicant had failed to prove. The applicant brought a receipt for 100,000 AMD paid to a dealership for an assessment and, asked at the hearing whether any auto-technical, trace or commodity expert conclusions existed, answered that they did not. The questions that decision sets out are the questions your experts have to close:
- Did the defect cause the damage, and could the driver have prevented it? The auto-technical examination, with a trace examination where needed. It runs on your stated speed and sighting distance.
- What exactly was damaged, and what is repairable rather than replaceable? Trace and auto-technical examination of the vehicle. A list of damaged parts is not proof that this event damaged them.
- What is the damage worth in drams? The commodity examination. It produces the figure you claim.
- Is the damage a direct, immediate and inevitable consequence of the defendant's conduct? The causal link, argued from the first three conclusions plus the police protocols and scheme.
Use a licensed forensic expert organisation rather than a garage. In the Arinj case the conclusion came from a forensic and independent examination centre and valued the damage at 175,000 AMD. Keep every receipt: expert fees are recoverable court costs.
Invite the body to the examination, in writing. The Yerevan Municipality's standard refusal has two limbs - that the damage has not been tied to that specific defect, and that the municipality took no part in the examination that says it was. You cannot make it come, but a dated invitation removes the second limb and leaves it arguing only the first.
You do not always have to buy the examination yourself. In ՎԴ/3892/05/24 the court appointed it, the National Bureau of Expertise charged 36,000 AMD, and the municipality was ordered to repay that along with the rest. Where you do commission one, commission it at once: in ՎԴ/0972/05/25 an insurer's expert conclusion, written 25 days after the accident, was held incapable of establishing the causal link, and the claim failed on that.
What it costs and how long it takes
The numbers say most people stop before filing. As of 3 April 2026 the Yerevan Municipality had received 523 pothole complaints, against 882 across all of 2025 - but only 5 property-damage compensation applications in 2025 and 3 in 2026, on the municipality's own figures given to Hetq.
Its public position is that there is nothing to apply for. At a press conference on 20 February 2026 deputy mayor Armen Pambukhchyan said the city had spread 12,500 tonnes of salt and sand in 2025 against 5,000 in 2024, two and a half times as much, and that this had contributed to the state of the road surface. Asked whether drivers of damaged cars could expect compensation, he answered: "What is responsible behaviour? Snow fell, we spread salt and potholes appeared. Should the snow have been left uncleared? This is a natural situation. The Municipality has no such compensation mechanism." He is right that no administrative procedure pays out on its own, and that is exactly why the route below is two court steps rather than one application. ՎԴ/3892/05/24, ՎԴ/10905/05/23 and ՎԴ/5628/05/21 are what the courts did with the same argument.
The Arinj claim was filed on 5 May 2024, won at first instance on 6 November 2025, and the ministry's appeal drew a first hearing date of 23 June 2027 - at least three years to an enforceable judgment, and only if nobody appeals again. Even a clean start is slow: the 592,000 AMD claim in ՎԴ/5878/05/26 was accepted on 15 April 2026 and its preliminary hearing was set for 10 November 2026, seven months later. Lawyers who run these cases put it bluntly: around 200,000 AMD of damage against roughly 400,000 AMD of costs and a three-to-four-year wait. Artak Khachaturov breaks that figure down as a 150,000 AMD minimum lawyer's fee, about 100,000 AMD for the two examinations, and the state duties on top, and puts the point at which the file becomes worth opening at around 800,000 AMD of damage. The costs come back if you win, but you finance them the whole way. And the Abovyan street manhole above marks the outer edge of what "slow" means here: the accident was in June 2016, the compensation claim was won in January 2022, and a hearing is still listed for 16 September 2026.
Your case gets a code in the form `ՎԴ/5878/05/26` - court, sequence number, case type, year - and you can follow every hearing and act under it on the judicial portal. See our guide to finding a court case on datalex.am.
Does insurance cover this?
Compulsory motor third-party liability insurance (CMTPL) does not. It covers "damage arising from the use of a motor vehicle" - damage your car causes to somebody else - so a solo hit on a pothole, or a sign landing on your parked car, falls outside it entirely. With no second participant there is also nothing for the agreed-declaration procedure between drivers to attach to.
A voluntary comprehensive policy may cover it, but only if damage from the road surface or from falling objects is inside the listed risks. Read the policy before you rely on it, and note that claiming on it does not stop the responsible party being pursued - the insurer normally goes after them itself.
That is not theory: on this evidence the insurers are the ones who litigate potholes at all - and they lose. Across 2024 and 2025 EFES Insurance brought eight separate claims against the Yerevan Municipality, each asking the Administrative Court to declare unlawful the failure to repair the pothole on one named street - Arshakunyats 44, Khorenatsi, Artsakhi, Myasnikyan avenue, the Marshal Babajanyan highway, the Sebastia-Leningradyan crossroads, Acharyan 33 and the Dzor 2nd district (ՎԴ/8305/05/24, ՎԴ/8329/05/24, ՎԴ/8370/05/24, ՎԴ/8381/05/24, ՎԴ/8452/05/24, ՎԴ/8506/05/24, ՎԴ/11209/05/24 and ՎԴ/0972/05/25). All eight were dismissed between October 2025 and June 2026. A ninth, against the Kotayk Regional Administration over Azatutyan street in Dzoraghbyur (ՎԴ/11399/05/24), is still running. INGO Armenia had run the same play in ՎԴ/9342/05/17 and lost it on 4 May 2018.
Those dismissals are the most useful reading in this whole file, because they turn on evidence rather than on law. In ՎԴ/0972/05/25, decided on 25 November 2025, EFES had paid a Mercedes owner 585,000 AMD of a 735,000 AMD loss after a solo hit into the pothole outside Arshakunyats 44, and it held an expert conclusion saying the pothole caused the damage. The court dismissed it anyway: the claim never said when the pothole had appeared, or whether the municipality knew of it and failed to repair it, so "there was a pothole" never became "the body was unlawfully inactive" - and the expert conclusion, dated 25 days after the accident, could not establish the causal link. INGO's case died more simply still. Its insured had signed the officer's protocol admitting his own fault and waiving the accident proceedings, and no independent expert conclusion was ever produced to displace that admission, so under Civil Code article 1058 the damage was his own.
Two rules follow, and they are yours as much as the insurer's. Never sign an admission of fault or waive the proceedings at the scene. And date the expert conclusion to the accident, not to the month after it.
Set against 5 compensation applications to the municipality in 2025 and 3 in 2026, the picture is not that the companies collect while the drivers give up. It is that almost nobody claims at all; that the companies which do claim lose on their own files; and that the few drivers who build a proper one - the Abovyan street manhole, the missing sign on Komitas, the M-15 potholes at Arinj, the unfenced works on the H-46 - are the ones who win.
Reporting a defect before it costs you a wheel
A reported defect that then damages a car is a far easier case than an unknown one, because the responsible party's knowledge is already documented. Send a written notification with photographs and the exact location to the body or company you would later claim from. The unified state application portal e-request.am routes written applications to state and community bodies and leaves a tracking record - exactly the proof of notification you will want later.
Separately, keeping roads in a condition unsafe for traffic, or failing to prohibit or restrict traffic in time on a section whose use threatens traffic safety, is an administrative offence under article 144 of the Code of Administrative Offences, punishable by a fine of 100,000 AMD.
Every one of these cases turns on its own facts: who owned the object, how the incident was recorded, what the experts concluded, and how the causal link was argued. Before filing, take the file to a lawyer who has run one of these to judgment. The route described here is accurate as a route, not as a substitute for representation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who pays for a car damaged by a pothole in Armenia?
The road's manager - but the law behind that answer differs by road. For interstate and republican roads it is the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure, under articles 15 and 18 of the Law on Motor Roads: the maintenance duty sits with the manager, and damage caused to road users by a road's defective condition is compensated. Ordinary city and village streets fall outside that law (article 1, part 2), and there the responsible party is the community - the Yerevan Municipality in the capital, whose mayor organises the maintenance and operation of city roads under article 45 of the Law on Local Self-Government in the City of Yerevan - with the claim built on Civil Code articles 1058 and 1063.
My car was damaged by an open manhole. Is that also the municipality?
Not necessarily. The chamber and its cover belong to the utility that owns them - the water and sewerage operator, the electricity or gas distributor, a telecom operator - and article 12, part 3 of the Law on Motor Roads requires such structures in the right-of-way of general-use state roads to be kept in proper condition. That article covers the state network only; on a city street you rely on who owns the chamber and on the ordinary tort rules. Since a company is sued in the civil court and a municipality in the Administrative Court, establish the owner in writing before you file. But the missing warning sign in front of the open manhole is always the road authority's, whoever owns the chamber: that is what case ՎԴ/10905/05/23 decided on 14 October 2024, and it is the claim ownership arguments cannot reach.
Has any driver actually been paid?
Yes, but the route is long. In ՎԴ/5628/05/21, decided on 7 January 2022, the Administrative Court ordered the Yerevan Municipality to adopt a favourable act paying 164,000 AMD for a wheel lost to an open manhole on Abovyan street - after a separate 2016 case had first declared the municipality's inaction unlawful and the municipality had ignored the written demand that followed. The accident was in June 2016 and a hearing in that case is still listed for 16 September 2026.
Can I just ask the court to order the municipality to pay me?
Not as your first move against a state body or a community. Article 96 of the Law on the Fundamentals of Administrative Action, as read by the Cassation Court in its 3 December 2010 decision in ՎԴ/0277/05/09, requires the inaction to be declared unlawful first, then a written compensation demand to the body, and only after its refusal a claim for the money. Claims that jumped straight to the sum were thrown out in ՎԴ/4968/05/19 on 3 February 2020 and again in ՎԴ/10468/05/24 on 25 March 2026 - the second one over a lighting pole that fell on a parked car - without either court looking at the merits.
A road sign fell on my parked car. What do I do?
Not the accident procedure: with no vehicle in motion this is not a road traffic accident under article 2 of the Law on Road Traffic Safety, so there is no accident protocol. Call 102 to have the incident registered, photograph the object where it fell along with the mount it came off, identify the owner from the markings on it, get an expert conclusion, and claim from that owner under the ordinary tort rules.
Is it easier to sue a company than a state body?
On the evidence, yes. Against an administrative body article 43 of the Law on the Fundamentals of Administrative Action puts the burden of proof on you, and article 96 requires the inaction to be declared unlawful before a dram is paid. Against a private party Civil Code article 1058 part 2 makes the defendant prove it was not at fault, and for construction works article 1072 removes fault from the question altogether.
Does a utility company pay even if it was not negligent?
For works, yes. Civil Code article 1072 lists construction and related activity as a source of increased danger, and the party carrying it out compensates the damage unless it proves force majeure or the victim's intent. Ordinary care is not a defence. The award can still be reduced for your own gross negligence under article 1076.
Why does the patrol officer ask about my speed and how far ahead I saw the defect?
Because the auto-technical expert uses those two figures to calculate whether you could have stopped. Point 67 of the traffic rules requires a driver to slow down for an obstacle they were able to detect, and Civil Code article 1076 lets the court reduce the award for gross negligence. Article 2 of the Law on Road Traffic Safety defines the sighting distance as the distance from an observation point at the height of the driver's seat to a visible object at the same height.
Can I move my car after a pothole accident?
You must, in most cases. Article 24, part 4.1, point 1 of the Law on Road Traffic Safety requires you to fix the scene by photo and video and then move the vehicle out of the way within 15 minutes of the accident - unless moving it is objectively impossible or it obstructs nobody where it stands. Record everything before you move it; afterwards nothing proves where it was.
Is a repair-shop estimate enough to claim compensation?
No. Yerevan Mayor's decision N 1450-Ա of 18 April 2024 refused a claim on exactly that basis: the applicant had a dealership assessment receipt but no auto-technical, trace or commodity expert conclusions. You need a conclusion on causation, one on the damage itself, and one on its value in drams.
How much does it cost to sue?
The state duty is a flat 10,000 AMD in the Administrative Court (20,000 for an appeal) and 3% of the amount claimed in the civil court, minimum 6,000 AMD. The real cost is the experts and the lawyer, which drivers and their counsel put at roughly 400,000 AMD in total. If you win, the court shifts those costs onto the losing side.
How long do I have to bring the claim?
Three years from the day you learned or should have learned of the damage - article 101 of the Law on the Fundamentals of Administrative Action, and article 332 of the Civil Code for the general limitation period. Against an administrative body there is a second, much shorter clock: once it refuses you, article 72 of the Administrative Procedure Code gives you two months to file.
Does it help that the road was maintained by a private contractor?
Not the road manager. In its 6 November 2025 judgment the Administrative Court held that assigning maintenance to a company leaves the manager with the duty to supervise those works and to bear the negative consequences. What it does give you is a second possible defendant - the contractor, in the civil court.
Official sources
- Law of the Republic of Armenia on Motor Roads - article 1 (scope: settlement streets outside the road register are excluded), article 3 (road classification), article 4 (the state road body, and the Yerevan transit sections excluded from it), article 12 (utility lines in the right-of-way: kept in proper condition, works agreed with the manager), article 15 (the manager's maintenance duty), article 18 (compensation to road users), article 19 (disputes go to court).
- Law of the Republic of Armenia on Road Traffic Safety - article 2 (definitions of a road traffic accident and of the sighting distance), article 24 (duties at the scene, the 15-minute rule, and the two protocols in part 4.3).
- Traffic Rules of the Republic of Armenia, Government Decision N 955-Ն of 28.06.2007 - points 22-23 (hazard lights and the warning sign), points 65-67 (speed, control and detectable obstacles), and the placement rule for warning signs 1.1, 1.2 and 1.5-1.33 (150-300 m before the hazard outside a built-up area, 50-100 m inside it, with 1.25 repeated no less than 50 m before it).
- Civil Code of the Republic of Armenia - article 17 (full compensation of losses), article 332 (three-year limitation), article 1058 (general grounds, and the defendant's burden of disproving fault), article 1062 (a company answers for its employees), article 1063 (liability of state and local self-government bodies), article 1072 (sources of increased danger, including construction activity), article 1075 (form of compensation), article 1076 (the victim's own fault).
- Law on the Fundamentals of Administrative Action and Administrative Proceedings - article 31 (form of an application), article 43 (burden of proof), article 45 (appointing an expert), articles 46-47 (the 30-day term and its extension), article 48 (the deemed-adopted act), article 95 (who pays), article 96 (the unlawfulness precondition), articles 100-102 (the claim, the deadline, the refusal).
- Administrative Procedure Code of the Republic of Armenia - article 3 (right to apply to the Administrative Court), article 29 (how the burden of proof splits by claim type), articles 67-69 (claim types), article 60 (distribution of court costs), article 72 (filing deadlines), article 86 (the respondent's two weeks to answer, and silence read as admission).
- Civil Procedure Code of the Republic of Armenia - article 101 (what court costs are), article 105 (expert and lawyer costs), article 107 (a lawyer's reasonable fee), article 109 (distribution of costs), article 122 (documents attached to a claim, and mandatory mediation where a law prescribes it).
- Law of the Republic of Armenia on State Duty - article 8 (the 1,000 AMD base duty), article 9, part 1 (civil-court rates), article 9, part 2 (administrative-court rates).
- Code of Administrative Offences of the Republic of Armenia - article 124.4 (speeding and the 10 km/h device-error deduction), article 140 (obstacles on the road and unauthorised works, 75,000 AMD), article 144 (keeping roads in an unsafe condition, 100,000 AMD), article 150.10 (utility crossings and failure to restore the road, up to 200,000 AMD).
- Law of the Republic of Armenia on Local Self-Government - article 12, part 1, point 10 (maintenance and operation of community road infrastructure as a mandatory task), article 44 (the community head's transport powers).
- Law of the Republic of Armenia on Local Self-Government in the City of Yerevan - article 45 (the Mayor organises the construction, maintenance and operation of city-significance roads, and only supports the works on the interstate and republican transit sections).
- cases.court.am - the Administrative and Bankruptcy court files, with the full text of every act as a signed PDF. It carries the Administrative Court's own electronic file, which in practice starts in the second half of 2025: ՎԴ/15966/05/25, filed on 22 September 2025, is there, and ՎԴ/0972/05/25, decided that November, is not. It is the source of ՎԴ/5878/05/26 and ՎԴ/15966/05/25 above.
- datalex.am - everything older, and the only portal that carries the civil and criminal courts, so the source of ԵԴ2/7903/02/25, ԵԴ2/11198/02/24 and every other case cited above. Between them the two portals overlap rather than hand over, so check both before concluding a case does not exist.
- Hetq, "Drivers damaged by road potholes give up on the courts", 4 May 2026 - the source of the Yerevan complaint and compensation-application counts, of the 200,000 / 400,000 / three-to-four-years arithmetic, and of Artak Khachaturov's breakdown of it.
- Panorama.am, "Yerevan Municipality rules out compensation for pothole damage", 20 February 2026 - the deputy mayor's statement that the Municipality has no compensation mechanism.
- Yerevan Mayor's decision N 1450-Ա of 18 April 2024 - the refusal that lists, question by question, the expert conclusions a claim needs.
- Cassation Court decision of 3 December 2010 in case ՎԴ/0277/05/09 - the precedent that makes compensation a two-step route: unlawfulness first, money second.
- "Road Department" Fund - not the road manager, but the ministry's implementing body for state road construction and repair projects. Its news feed is where the repair tenders and the road closures are published.
