18 October 2022
CEPEJ-SATURN(2021)11REV2
EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR THE EFFICIENCY OF JUSTICE
(CEPEJ)
WORKING GROUP ON JUDICIAL TIME MANAGEMENT
(CEPEJ-SATURN)
Questionnaire on analysing the length of civil proceedings
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ANALYSIS OF THE LENGTH OF CIVIL PROCEEDINGS |
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Description of the action: The overall aim of this action is to analyse the length of civil proceedings with the focus on detecting possible delays and identify the reasons for their occurrence. The analysis can help, in a long run perspective, to design measures to address the delays. The CEPEJ Working Group on judicial time management (CEPEJ-SATURN) will gather information on court proceedings in civil matters from Council of Europe member States and observers. This is an initial step before preparing guidance to improve the overall length of civil proceedings in different judicial systems, using concrete examples from existing practices. This questionnaire aims to identify what the « legal » deadlines are for conducting individual steps in a standard/ordinary procedure, their actual or estimated duration in practice, and why there may be a difference between these two aspects (legal deadlines and estimated duration). The analysis and comparison of the data collected through this questionnaire could help determine the specific procedural steps where delays usually take place, as well as the reasons for their occurrence. Please note that the steps listed in the table below have been selected not only because they are considered common in the majority of judicial systems, but also because it is assumed that deadlines for these steps are envisaged in the laws/regulations of Council of Europe member States and observers. Some other important procedural actions are not indicated as a particular step in this questionnaire (such as judicial expertise, etc.) as a large number of judicial systems do not set fixed deadlines, leaving it to judges to determine deadlines on a case-by-case basis. However, they might be included in future CEPEJ questionnaires that will deal with these topics. For further explanation of the terminology and procedural steps, please see below the Explanatory Note. |
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Instance of the court (if your court acts as both first and second instance, please select only one instance): ☐ First instance ☐ Second (appeal) instance |
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Name of the respondent: |
Email address: |
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Procedural steps |
Deadlines prescribed by laws/regulations (in days) |
Data on the actual duration of the procedural step? (If you have data on the actual duration, please answer “yes”, and provide the data (in days) in this column. If “no” , please provide an estimate in the following column. |
Estimaded duration of the procedural step (in days) |
If there is difference between deadlines prescribed by laws/regulations and actual or estimated duration in practice, please explain the reasons for this gap. |
Comments (any further comment and explanation would be appreciated) |
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Serving documents - time between sending the documents initiating a legal action by the plaintiff and their reception by a defendant |
Days / ☐ NA/ ☐ NAP |
☐ Yes; Duration in days:______ ☐ No |
_______ |
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Filing a response to the legal action by the defendant - time between the reception of the documents initiating a legal action by the defendant and submission of their response |
Days_____/ ☐ NA/ ☐ NAP |
☐ Yes; Duration in days:______ ☐ No |
_______ |
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Preliminary hearing (or first hearing in some jurisdictions) - time between the court's reception of the defendant's response and the preliminary/first hearing |
Days_____/ ☐ NA/ ☐ NAP |
☐ Yes; Duration in days:______ ☐ No |
_______ |
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Final hearing – time between the preliminary/first hearing and last hearing |
Days_____/ ☐ NA/ ☐ NAP |
☐ Yes; Duration in days:______ ☐ No |
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Issuing a written judgment after an oral judgment - time between the rendering of an oral judgment and the issuing of a written judgment (short version) |
Days_____/ ☐ NA/ ☐ NAP |
☐ Yes; Duration in days:______ ☐ No |
_______ |
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Issuing a written judgment - time between the closing of the final hearing and the issuing of a written judgment |
Days_____/ ☐ NA/ ☐ NAP |
☐ Yes; Duration in days:______ ☐ No |
_______ |
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Total length of the proceeding - time between the start of the legal action by the plaintiff and the issuing of a final written judgment by the court |
Days_____/ ☐ NA/ ☐ NAP |
☐ Yes; Duration in days:______ ☐ No |
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Filing an appeal on the first instance judgment - time between the reception of the first instance judgment by the parties and their submission of an appeal to the second instance court |
Days_____/ ☐ NA/ ☐ NAP |
☐ Yes; Duration in days:______ ☐ No |
_______ |
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EXPLANATORY NOTE
Please provide answers which relate to (ordinary/standard) regular civil proceedings and not to any other kind of specific subtype of civil proceedings, such as small claims, simplified proceedings, family law disputes or any other specialised form of civil litigation. An ordinary civil proceeding should be understood as a general civil procedure that applies to any legal matter which is not attributed to specialised civil proceedings owing to the nature of the case. Therefore, this should be seen as a “default” procedure that would apply if no specific procedure (such as family law, labour law, commercial law procedure) is prescribed for the dispute at hand. However, if your court only deals with specialised civil proceedings (e.g. commercial, family law), please answer the questionnaire and provide the data while specifying the kind of cases dealt with by your court in the comments box.
Deadlines prescribed by laws/regulations – the duration should reflect legal deadlines envisaged in the relevant laws and regulations which regulate civil proceedings in your legal system. In most systems, the laws will set a deadline (maximum duration) for each procedural step (e.g. 60 days for issuing a written judgment). Should the rules set the minimum and maximum duration, please provide the maximum value in the answer box and indicate both the minimum and maximum values in the comments box. For example, this can happen when a law sets the deadline for a preliminary hearing between 30 and 60 days since the day of reception of a lawsuit by a defendant. In this case, the answer in the line “Preliminary hearing” would be 60 days, as it shows the maximum prescribed value, and the comment should specify that the law prescribes a minimum of 30 to a maximum of 60 days.
Data on the actual duration of the procedural step - if you answered “yes”, please provide the statistical data that you have in the related answer box after “duration in days”. The data in this part should represent an average value calculated for the actual duration recorded between two steps in all ordinary civil cases resolved since 1 January 2022 in your court. These data are usually available in case management systems which can record separate steps.
Estimaded duration of the described step – if you answered “no” to the previous question, please indicate your estimate of the average time spent on each individual step in the procedure. Your estimate could be based on data taken from a sample of cases or from your personal experience. This could be done by taking a sample of cases from each civil case judge (e.g. 10 recently resolved civil cases from each judge) and extracting the duration for each step from the case files. When the data are extracted, it is easy to calculate the average value (adding up all the extracted values per step and dividing them with the number of sampled cases). Another method might be organising a focus group discussion where several civil case judges would estimate the time needed for each of the listed procedural steps in a civil case of medium complexity (neither very simple nor complex cases). Then, the average value of their estimates would be calculated by adding up their estimates and dividing it by the number of focus group members.
The duration of all procedural steps has to be presented in days. If you only have the length of procedural steps expressed in months or weeks, please recalculate them to express the duration in days to allow comparisons (e.g. 1 month should be presented as 30 days, 4 weeks as 28 days, etc).
Difference between deadlines prescribed by laws/regulations and actual or estimated duration in practice - please name the most common causes of delays for each step and describe them as precisely as possible.
Comments - the information entered into the comments box should refer to specificities of each judicial system which may be helpful when analysing the replies and processing the data. It is not required to fill in this box systematically; only when specificities in the system should be explained to enable proper understanding of data, particularly if procedural steps in the national legislation differ from the definitions and examples given in the explanatory note (for example the moment from which the deadline starts to count is different from the moment indicated in the explanatory note). These comments should be as precise as possible.
NA and NAP answers:
NA (information/data are not available) means that the concept/category referred to in the question exists in your system, but you cannot provide the answer/data (e.g. preliminary hearings exist in your system, but you cannot provide the deadline for them because the law does not prescribe one and allows a judge to set deadlines based on the circumstances of each particular case).
NAP (not applicable) means that the question is not relevant because the category mentioned in the question does not exist in your system (for example, rendering an oral judgment is not prescribed as an option in your civil procedure).
PROCEDURAL STEPS
Serving documents - the duration should be calculated from the time a plaintiff has sent the documents (delivered them to a court/post office/delivery service) to the lawful reception by a defendant. In some systems, the plaintiff delivers the documents initiating a legal action (lawsuit, appeal, etc.) to a court and then the court forwards them to the defendant; in other systems, the plaintiff delivers the concerned documents directly to the defendant and submits a proof of summoning to the court. Irrespective of how these processes are organised, the respondents to this questionnaire should provide the legally prescribed deadline and the relevant data/estimate on duration of the delivery of documents. In the comments box, you are invited to provide information on how the serving of documents is carried out in your jurisdiction. Furthermore, if your system uses possibilities of electronic communication between courts and parties (such as e-filing), please specify that in the comment and explain, briefly, how it works.
Filing a response to the legal action by the defendant - time between the lawful reception of the documents initiating a legal action by a defendant and submission of his/her response (in days). In some systems, the response can be submitted to a court and then the court delivers it to the other party(ies), in other systems the defendant delivers their response directly to a plaintiff and submit a proof of summoning to the court. Irrespective of how these processes are organised, the respondents to this questionnaire should provide the legally prescribed deadline and the relevant data/estimate on duration off the delivery of documents. In the comments box, you are invited to provide information on how the filing of a response is carried out in your jurisdiction.
Preliminary hearing (or first hearing in some jurisdictions) - time between the court's reception of the defendant's response or a proof of summoning and having the preliminary/first hearing (in days). Irrespective of how this hearing is named in your system (first, preliminary, preparatory, etc.), the respondents to this questionnaire should provide the legally prescribed deadline and the relevant data/estimate on duration, if they exist.
Final hearing – should include the total time spent on all procedural actions between the preliminary/first hearing and the last hearing. This should include all the hearings and the time that passed between them, including time for obtaining different evidence, such as providing judicial expertise, gathering missing documents or summoning witnesses. Considering that this step is very broad and comprises many different procedural actions, please you may elaborate in the comments box on actions that take the most time and the most common reasons for delays in this step of proceedings.
Issuing a written judgment after an oral judgment - time between rendering an oral judgment and issuing a written judgment (short version). This step concerns only judicial systems that envisage the possibility of rendering oral judgments right after the closing of the final hearings, with the handing down a written judgment some time afterwards. The difference with the next step is that in those judicial systems, where this possibility exists, there may be shorter deadlines for issuing the written judgment after the oral one (e.g. in Austria).
Issuing a written judgment - time between the final hearing and the issuing of a written judgment (in days).
Total length of the proceeding -- time between the start of the legal action by the plaintiff and the issuing of the final written judgment by the court.
Filing an appeal on the first instance judgment - time between the reception of the first instance judgment by the parties and their submission of the appeal to the court (in days).