A lawyer ruled that the reduction in compensation for victims of the cable car accident in Nalchik was legal.

The amount of compensation, including for emotional distress, is at the discretion of the court. In considering the case of the cable car collapse in Nalchik, the court took into account the owner's expenses, including tickets and cell phones.

As previously reported, on the evening of August 8, 2025, in Nalchik's Atazhukinsky Park, the cable of a cable car carrying 23 people snapped. Almost half of the passengers fell—some into the water, some to the ground—and the rest were rescued. Eight people were injured in the incident, the most seriously—three adults and two teenagers.

As "Caucasian Knot" reported, on August 8, 2025, 12 people were injured in a cable car collapse in Nalchik, one of them with serious injuries. All the victims were tourists, the head of the republic announced. By the morning of August 9, four people remained in the hospital; one patient had undergone surgery, and another was scheduled for surgery. The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case under the article on providing unsafe services resulting in grievous bodily harm. In September, the Nalchik City Court upheld the prosecutor's office's claim and ordered the cable car owner to pay the three victims more than 3 million rubles, but the republic's Supreme Court halved the amount.

Nalchik lawyer Oleg Sergeev answered questions from the "Caucasian Knot" regarding compensation for moral damages and cable car safety.

According to him, it was officially reported that all those injured in the cable car cable break were tourists from the Lipetsk Region, Moscow, and Makhachkala.

He pointed out that the determination of the amount of compensation under the law remains at the discretion of the court.

Of course, a fall from a great height—and the cable car, as far as I know, was located at a height of 80 meters—can cause both physical suffering (pain) and a negative mental reaction (stress). When determining the amount of compensation, the court, as a rule, considers not only the nature of the victim's mental suffering and the defendant's degree of culpability, but also compliance with the principles of reasonableness and fairness," the lawyer noted.

According to him, the Supreme Court concluded that the trial court failed to take into account the fact that the cable car management had already taken steps to compensate for the damages. "They assisted the victims in obtaining the necessary medical care, purchased return tickets for them, and also gave two of them new mobile phones to replace the lost ones. The court determined this as proper 'legal conduct' on the part of the defendant. Taking this into account, the court reduced the compensation amount. From a legal perspective, there is nothing to complain about here. Another issue is that clarifications and additions to Article 151 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation may be needed to limit its potential for arbitrary interpretation," he emphasized. The cable car is indeed quite old; it is a Soviet-era structure, but it became the property of Zhemchuzhina Excursion Complex LLC later, sometime in the early 2000s, Sergeev said. It is known that in December 2024, the Nalchik City Court fined the LLC's administration 100,000 rubles for an administrative offense. The lawsuit was filed by the head of the department for supervision of lifting mechanisms of the Caucasus Department of Rostekhnadzor. During the inspection conducted by the department, approximately 30 violations of federal laws and other regulations in the field of industrial safety were identified. In particular, one of the violations identified at the time—"the load-bearing and traction rope has multiple areas of extrusion of rope strands, in which case its use is not permitted"—led to the collapse of the cable car. In court, a representative of Rostekhnadzor insisted that the operation of the facility posed a threat of harm to an unspecified number of people, demanding that its operation be suspended. However, representatives of the LLC convinced the court that most of the identified violations had already been corrected. The company was fined, but the court, unfortunately, considered the closure of the facility an extreme measure. I believe the criminal case will be brought under the article "providing services that do not meet safety requirements." These actions of the LLC will be given a legal assessment."

He also believes that the owners of similar attractions, I believe, will draw this conclusion from the very fact of the cable car collapse.

The lawyer pointed out that any business can pose a potential danger to varying degrees. "Even a taxi service, all sorts of accidents happen on the roads," said Sergeev.

He emphasized that the cable car is closed and will not operate for an unknown length of time, so what benefit is there.

Public figure Aishat Sultanova believes that such facilities, Things like cable cars, amusement rides, and so on should never be transferred to private hands.

"For a private owner, profit comes first, and safety and everything else are secondary. That's where everything that happens comes from. This is worth paying attention to."

As a reminder, back in late 2024, Rostekhnadzor specialists concluded that the operation of the chairlift violated safety requirements and posed a threat of harm to people. On December 5 of that year, a representative of Zhemchuzhina LLC acknowledged the claims in court but explained that most of the violations had been corrected.

Then, eight months before the accident, the court fined the company 100,000 rubles and considered the suspension of the chairlift's operations an extreme measure, since "no objective data indicating that the chairlift's operation poses a real threat to the life and health of citizens or the occurrence of an emergency situation was presented to the court."