Newsletter
CODE OF CIVIL PROCEDURE AMENDED
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to the Code of Civil Procedure (CCP) this January, which will take effect soon. This amendment has significantly changed key mechanisms of the civil procedure as described below.
Currently, to initiate a civil action, the plaintiff needs to pre-pay a court fee of 1.1% of the amount claimed at the district court level (the first instance). The losing party must pre-pay a court fee of 1.65% of the appeal amount each at the high court and the Supreme Court levels when filing an appeal.
The amendment changes the above fee schedule and provides a six-tier- accumulative fee sched-ule based on the claimed amount. As to the court fee for an appeal, using the same scale, an addi-tional 50% will be charged. Under the new fee schedule, court fees for huge claims will be lower than before.
To make legal proceedings cost-effective, the amendment allows victims from public hazard, traffic accidents, product liability, or similar causes, to sue as a class in court, and others with common interest may join the proceeding.
In addition, a non-profit association or founda-tion, within the purpose stipulated in its articles of incorporation, after obtaining the competent authority's approval, may file a lawsuit to stop the defendant from infringing the public. This provision applies to public hazards, defective products, and other hazards which are of a con-tinuous, hidden, or sweeping nature and the vic-tims generally do not have the knowledge or capacity to curb the infringing acts by them-selves.
The court fees for initiating the above lawsuits are either substantially reduced or exempted.
Currently, if a party wants to appoint an attorney in the proceedings, he needs to submit one power of attorney (POA) at each court level. The amendment allows a party to issue a notarized POA covering all court levels so that the POA only needs to be submitted once.
Under the current CCP, the trial of high court is deemed to be a continuance of that of the district court. As such, both parties are allowed to in-troduce new evidence and raise new arguments. However, the amendment disallows the parties to do so unless (1) the parties were unable to in-troduce the evidence or raise the argument in the district court because the district court disobeyed the laws or regulations; (2) it is a new fact that occurred after the date of closing debate; (3) it is simply a supplement to the evidence or argument already submitted or raised at the district court; (4) the fact is obvious to the court or the court has the duty to investigate it; (5) the failure to submit the evidence or raise the argument is not attrib-utable to the party; or (6) disallowing the sub-mission will be apparently unfair.
The above changes may therefore make the trial at the district court level the most critical stage in terms of fact-finding. Missing this stage, the parties will have little leeway to introduce new evidence to the appellant court.
According to the current CCP, appealing to the Supreme Court must be based on the reason that the judgment violates the laws or regulations. The CCP also specifies the grounds on which a judgment is deemed in violation of the laws and regulations. The amendment further sets re-striction to the threshold for appealing a case to the Supreme Court. That is, if the cause for ap-pealing is not the one specified in the CCP, such appeal shall be subject to the Supreme Court's approval and such approval shall be granted only when the case involves critical legal issues or inconsistency between or among judgments.
Currently, the Supreme Court in principle only conducts documentary review. Only in rare circumstances will the Supreme Court hold a hearing. The amendment provides the contrary. That is, the Supreme Court should in general hold hearings for the parties to debate on the legal issues except where it deems such hearing unnecessary.
The parties, upon agreement on the facts found by the district court and when only legal issues are in dispute, may file an appeal against the district court judgment directly to the Supreme Court.
Currently, the court should not abolish a provi-sional measure at a requested of a debtor by of-fering security except there are special occasions. In the amendment, in the following occasions the court may indicate in a provisional order that the provisional order will be dismissed or abolished when the debtor lodges the required security:
1.The claim that a provisional measure se-cures could be achievable by payment of money.
2.Debtor will suffer irreparable damage be-cause of a provisional measure.
3.If there are other special occasions.
And the court should allow the creditor an op-portunity to be heard before issuing such ruling.
The amendment will substantially change the current litigation practice and affect the parties' litigation strategies, and deserves special atten-tion of parties currently in dispute.