Prague Supreme Court overturns lower court’s verdict regarding Lucerna Palace ownership dispute

For the second time, Prague’s Supreme Court has overturned a Prague city court verdict regarding an ownership dispute over one half of the capital’s famous Lucerna palace between former president Václav Havel’s sister-in-law Dagmar Havlová and the real-estate firm Chemapol. According to the Supreme Court, the city court’s judge failed to properly determine the actual value of the Lucerna palace real estate. In the city court’s verdict, the ruling judge argued that when Mrs Havlová bought half of the palace from Chemapol, the firm was threatened by bankruptcy and sold it at a much lower price than the actual value of the real estate. The judge based her estimate of the real estate’s value on the price that Chemapol paid the former president when it bought the other half of the palace in 1997.