MOSCOW, November 16 - RAPSI. Attorney Igor Trunov has submitted a lawsuit against Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, asking the authorities to draft a bill regulating the procedure for holding legal proceedings in the event that a defendant is dead, the attorney has reported on his website on Friday.

Trunov said he submitted an application to the government in October related to the upcoming trial in a high-profile car crash case. Investigators believe that a woman who died in the crash was responsible for the accident.

"How can she be judged when there are no laws stipulating the procedures in the case," he said as the representative of the deceased woman's family.

He added that the authorities have not taken any measures to draft a corresponding bill, which is why he submitted a motion to the Presnensky District Court.

Medvedev is a defendant in the case.

He noted that the Constitutional Court has found that the Criminal Procedural Code provisions prohibiting trials in the event that a defendant is dead do not correspond with Russian law.

He said such cases were previously sent to the archives, but after the Constitutional Court ruling, the government had to draft amendments to the law within three months.

However, the attorney stressed that 15 months have already passed since the ruling.

A car crash involving a LUKOIL vice president occurred in Moscow on February 25, 2010. Renowned doctors Vera Sidelnikova and Olga Alexandrina died in the crash. Barkov received only minor injuries. The crash sparked a public outrage as many believed the top manager was responsible. In 2010, investigators concluded that Alexandrina was guilty in the crash.