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LITIGATION ALLOWED AGAINST APPEAL REVOCATION OF AN ADMINISTRATIVE DISPOSITION
Article 4, Paragraph 3 of the Code of Adminis-trative Procedure provides that if an interested party other than the appellant believes that an administrative appeal decision is detrimental to his rights or legal interests, he may file a litiga-tion with the High Administrative Court for revocation of the appeal decision. Accordingly, the High Administrative Court has usually taken the view that if a participant in an administrative appeal, or another interested party, does not ac-cept a decision by the appellate agency to revoke the original administrative disposition, it may file an administrative suit with the appellate agency as defendant.
However, in a 2001 trademark invalidation case, the Taipei High Administrative Court cited the precedent of a 1938 judgment of the then Ad-ministrative Court, and held that a precondition for bringing a suit for revocation in the High Administrative Court was the existence of an administrative disposition; if the administrative disposition in question no longer existed, having been overturned by an administrative appeal, then no administrative suit could be brought. If a dissatisfied party brought a suit nevertheless, the suit would have no legal basis, and the court should directly dismiss it without hearing oral arguments, under Article 107, Paragraph 3 of the Code of Administrative Procedure.
In the above judgment, the court also stated that if the original administrative disposition was revoked on appeal, and the appellate agency or-dered the original agency to make another lawful disposition, then the parties should wait until the original agency made a new disposition as di-rected by the appeal decision. Only then, if they were dissatisfied with the new disposition, could they file an administrative appeal or administra-tive suit against the new disposition.
In another similar 2001 case, the Taipei High Administrative Court took a similar view, and dismissed the administrative suit, on the grounds that it failed to meet the statutory criteria for bringing a suit.
However, in its ruling on a motion to set aside the above ruling of the Taipei High Administrative Court, the Supreme Administrative Court stated that if an administrative appeal decision is det-rimental to the rights or legal interests of the plaintiff, a suit may not be directly dismissed on the grounds of lacking subject matter or failure to meet other statutory criteria. Therefore the Su-preme Administrative Court returned the entire case to the Taipei High Administrative Court for reconsideration.