Shortly after this judgement, an action was initiated by Dilorom Rozikova and other residents in the Samarkand Administrative Court, seeking to invalidate the Samarkand city mayoral decree no. 1217-K. Their case was rejected on the grounds that the court could not invalidate a prior Civil Court decision.116 The court argued that mayoral decree 1217-K merely changed the wording of the prior Samarkand city decree 1510-K, replacing Samarkand Agro Export Service with Silk Voyage LLC. Decree no. 1510-K, the court argued, was declared valid with regard to buildings 43 and 49, as residents consented to the eviction, referencing the Samarkand city Civil Court judgement of 21 December 2017. It was argued: ‘Pursuant to Article 72 (3) of the Code of Administrative Procedure of the Republic of Uzbekistan, an enforceable judgement of a civil or economic court is binding on an administrative court hearing another case on the circumstances established by a civil or economic court judgement and relevant to the persons involved in the case.’ Article 72 is entitled ‘grounds for exemption from proof’ and stipulates conditions when facts do and do not need to be proven again. One instance is where they have been proven in a previous Civil or Economic Court hearing.117 This article does not prevent the Administrative Court from hearing or deliberating on a distinctive new legal question relating to those established facts. The Administrative Court argued in this case that the question before it had been considered by the Civil Court in its judgement dated 21 December 2017, where the original decree no. 1510-K was said to apply only to buildings 43 and 49 – complexes in which it was held that all residents had consented. This conclusion of the Administrative Court was reached despite the fact that the 21 December case only considered whether a subsequent decree, no. 1755-K, violated the rights of the then developer, not whether decree 1510-K and updates made by 1217-K violated the property rights of residents. Furthermore, in the 2017 case, residents from apartment block 49 had not been able to appear, while on appeal the courts recognised lack of consent from residents in apartment block 49. Nevertheless, it appears that a provision in the Administrative Code, which permits the Administrative Courts to accept conclusions on fact reached in preceding Civil and Economic Court judgements, was used by the court in this case to justify accepting certain statements of fact from the 21 December 2017 Civil Court judgement, despite the fact that they were subsequently disputed and overruled, and despite the fact that the case was deciding whether the developer’s rights had been violated by decree no. 1755-K. By accepting certain facts as having been established in the 2017 hearing, i.e., that consent had been given, the Administrative Court ruled that no resident rights were violated by decree nos. 1510-K and 1217-K. This appears to be a selective and problematic reading of the Administrative Code, which denied residents a fair and substantive hearing in the Administrative Court. Alongside the administrative court action, an appeal was also submitted to the Civil Court of appeal by the Rozikova sisters, in an attempt to quash the eviction order.118 The Appellant Court, which featured two of the judges who had initially rejected the developer’s request for eviction, did not deliberate on whether there were lawful grounds for public acquisition, including both with respect to a master plan and property owner consent. Despite the lack of consent, the court left the original decision of the Civil Court untouched, with one amendment, that Silk Voyage LLC was ordered to pay Shakhnoza Rozikova an additional 1,991,862 UZS. This represents the difference in value between her current apartment and the apartment offered by Silk Voyage. A False Sense of Legality 41