26 April, 2016
The Council for the Judiciary supported amendments to the Civil Procedure Law being currently advanced in the Saeima (Parliament), which are envisaged to increase the efficiency of cassation proceedings.
Edite Vernusa, the Chair of the Department of Civil Cases of the Supreme Court, and Rihards Gulbis, the Legal Adviser to the department, when presenting the envisaged amendments to the Council for the Judiciary, pointed out that the purpose of amendments to the law is to decrease terms of adjudication of civil cases in cassation instance and to ensure primary direction of resources of the Department of Civil Cases of the Supreme Court to review of legal issues, which are fundamental and important for the entire legal system.
The draft law envisages specification of reasons of rejections to initiate cassation proceedings, stipulating that it is possible not to initiate proceedings, if the panel of judges does not have clear reason to believe that the outcome of the case included in the appealed judgement is incorrect, and if the case does not have significant importance for ensuring of unified case-law or further development of law. There has also been planned to introduce a new reason of rejection of initiation of cassation proceedings, namely, the criteria of contested sum (2100 Euros) in property disputes.
It has been envisaged to increase the amount of security deposit from 284.57 to 300 Euros and to refuse from automatic release from obligation to pay a security deposit in cases, when a court had released a participant to a case from the payment of state fee at some previous stage of proceedings.
The regulation regarding the right of the panel of judges of the Supreme Court to refuse to admit the ancillary complains in cases, when those are obviously ill-founded, has been specified.
Finally, the draft law envisages stipulation of right of the cassation instance to compose judgement in simplified manner in cases, when the appealed judgement is correct and includes case-law; the case-law of the Supreme Court in similar cases is not observed in the appealed judgement, and there are no reasoning for non-observance thereof.
The cassation instance court will have right to prolong the deadline for composition of complete text of a judgement, if the court establishes that qualitative preparation of the judgement requires longer time than it was initially determined.
Information prepared by
Rasma Zvejniece, the Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court
E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: 67020396, 28652211