Essentially, a dispute is a conflict of rights and interests between two or more parties who have a binding relationship of certain rights and interests with each other on the basis of a contract or civil agreement. When a dispute arises, the parties can choose to resolve the dispute by many different methods. Among these methods, dispute settlement at the Court is a relatively common method. When choosing to settle disputes at the Court, in order to avoid wasting time, effort and money, the parties need to pay attention to whether the dispute is eligible to be accepted or not before filing a lawsuit petition at the Court. In this article, TNTP lawyers will analyze the conditions for the Court to accept the dispute so that the parties can understand before choosing to settle the dispute at the Court.
1. Condition on the subject of the lawsuit
Firstly, the subject of the lawsuit must be a subject with civil procedure behavior capacity.
Civil procedural behavior capacity is defined by the Civil Procedure Code 2015 as the ability to exercise civil procedural rights and obligations by themselves or authorize a representative to participate in civil procedures. Accordingly, Article 69 of the Civil Procedure Code 2015 stipulates as follows:
• For involved parties being individuals: Involved parties who have full civil procedure behavior capacity from eighteen years old or older, except for persons who have lost their civil behavior capacity or otherwise provided for by law. Normally, for persons under the age of 18, the exercise of civil procedural rights and obligations, the protection of legitimate rights and interests will be carried out by their legal representatives.
An exception to this case is that if the involved parties are under eighteen years old but have participated in labor under labor contracts or civil transactions with their own property, they may participate in the proceedings on matters related to such labor relations or civil relations by themselves.
• For agencies and organizations: When the involved parties are agencies and organizations, their legal representatives will participate in the proceedings.
Secondly, the subject must have the right to initiate a lawsuit.
Pursuant to Article 186 of the Civil Procedure Code 2015 on the right to initiate lawsuits, agencies, organizations and individuals have the right to initiate lawsuits on their own or through their legal representatives at competent People’s Courts to request the protection of their legitimate rights and interests.
Thus, it can be understood that, at the time of initiating a lawsuit, if the plaintiff has grounds to believe that their rights and interests have been infringed, they have the right to initiate a lawsuit to protect their legitimate rights and interests.
2. Condition on the jurisdiction of the Court
The Court shall only accept disputes fall within the jurisdiction of the Court. Accordingly, for each case, the plaintiff must correctly identify and file a lawsuit petition at a competent court.
The jurisdiction of the Court should be determined in the following order:
(1) The competent Court by case;
(2) The competent Court according to the level of adjudication;
(3) The competent Court by territory.
In addition, the Court’s jurisdiction is also determined according to the plaintiff’s choice according to Article 40 of the Civil Procedure Code 2015.
3. The matter has not been resolved by a legally effective judgment or decision
One of the conditions for accepting disputes is that the matter in the dispute must not have been resolved by a legally effective judgment or decision. In case the dispute has been settled by a legally effective judgment or decision of the Court or an effective decision of a competent state agency, the Court will not accept the case and at the same time will return the lawsuit petition to the plaintiff. Where the Court has accepted the case and findthat the matter has been resolved by effective documents, the Court will issue a decision to suspend the settlement of the case according to Point g Clause 1 Article 217 of the Civil Procedure Code 2015.
4. Pre-procedural procedures condition
For some disputes in specific fields such as labor disputes and land disputes,… the pre-procedural procedures is a must conditions for the court to accept the case.
For example, in the settlement of labor disputes, before initiating a lawsuit at a competent People’s Court, for some labor disputes, the parties are forced to bring the case to settlement through the mediation procedures of the labor mediator. These are disputes that are not required to go through the mediation procedures specified in Clause 1 Article 188 of the Labor Code 2019 and Clause 1 Article 32 of the Civil Procedure Code 2015. When conducting mediation procedures, only in case the labor mediator fails to conduct mediation after the expiration of the mediation time limit or in case the mediation fails, the disputing parties have the right to initiate a lawsuit at a competent court.
5. Condition for payment of advance court fee
Paying the advance court fee is the obligation of the plaintiff specified in Clause 1 Article 146 of the Civil Procedure Code 2015. Accordingly, the plaintiff in a civil case must pay the first-instance advance court fee, except for cases where the court advances fee is exempted or not required.
Regarding the legal consequences of not paying the advance court fee, pursuant to Point d Clause 1 Article 192 of the Civil Procedure Code 2015, when the time limit specified in Clause 2 Article 195 of the Civil Procedure Code 2015 expires, the plaintiff fails to submit the receipt of the advance court fee to the Court and it does not fall into the case where the plaintiff is exempted or does not have to pay the advance court fee or has objective obstacles or force majeure events, the Court will not accept the case and return the petition to the plaintiff.
Note: The conditions for accepting the case do not include the content of the statute of limitations for initiating a lawsuit. However, according to regulations, in case the involved parties request the application of the statute of limitations before the first-instance court issues a judgment or decision to settle the case and the statute of limitations for initiating a lawsuit has been expired, the court will suspend the case even though the case has been accepted.
Above is the content of the article “Conditions for the court to accept the dispute when choosing to resolve the dispute at the Court that TNTP sends to readers. Hopefully, the article will be beneficial to readers.
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