The Supreme Court establishes that arriving 20 minutes late for a trial and not notifying it is failure to appear and loss of the lawsuit

by time news

Arriving 20 minutes late for a trial without warning or without justifying the delay can lead to a loss in the lawsuit. This has been established by the Supreme Court in a ruling in which it endorses a Madrid court that found a company to have failed to appear because his lawyer arrived 20 days late for the trial that he had in the central Calle Princesa in Madrid. The Supreme Court endorses the decision to have the company withdrawn because his lawyer arrived late “without notifying and without giving a reason for a circumstance that prevented him from arriving at the time he was summoned.”

The judicial lawyers maintain the indefinite strike: “The Ministry of Justice has deceived us”

Further

The two sentences in the case reflect that the trial in question had to be held on Thursday, May 16, 2018 at a quarter to ten in the morning in the Social Court 30 of Madrid, located on Calle Princesa, near Plaza de Spain. It was a lawsuit on account of a sanction between the company that manages the Supeco supermarkets and the Ministry of Economy of the Community of Madrid and the company’s lawyer arrived at the court 20 minutes later, without warning and without justifying the delay.

The social court decided to have the company forfeited and the company decided to appeal, explaining that the lawyer did explain the reason for the delay to the lawyer of the Community of Madrid, to the Lawyer of the Administration of Justice and to the magistrate herself, requesting the resumption of the process. “A mere 20-minute delay is not a presumption to appreciate the withdrawal,” the company alleged in its appeals.

At first, the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid was understanding and forced the court to set a new date for the trial. That first sentence recognized that the lawyer had not justified his delay and that he had not notified either, but that it was not a sufficient reason to close the procedure. And in that ruling, the judges alluded to traffic in Madrid.

“In a city like Madrid, and with the courts located in the heart of the city, a slight delay like the one at hand cannot give rise to a party having given up,” said the Social Chamber of the Superior Court, located in the Madrid neighborhood of Almagro, about three kilometers away. “Usually, the courts have the consideration of waiting for courtesy for a reasonable period of time, such as 20 minutes, and withdrawal cannot be presumed,” said that sentence.

A “courtesy” that the Supreme Court has just rejected in a recent ruling of its social court that agrees with the Community of Madrid and confirms what the court said: that an unjustified delay of 20 minutes is enough to have for withdrawn to the party whose lawyer has arrived late. “There was no notice,” the judges reproach, emphasizing that the lawyer neither called nor justified his delay. A notice that, according to the Supreme Court, is “a procedural requirement of unavoidable compliance.”

Traffic and judicial delays

The Supreme Court recognizes that it is not easy to travel through Madrid at certain hours of the day. “The city of Madrid presents singular profiles in order to the displacements that can be more or less complex, but this cannot justify by itself the fact that people, without further ado, do not attend the acts at the appointed time,” reproaches the judgment. A warning call, they add, would have allowed the court and the Community of Madrid to “adapt their agendas.”

The Supreme Court also explains that the Constitutional Court has written jurisprudence in matters like this. In 2003, for example, he rejected the claims of several teachers from Catalonia who were suing the Generalitat because his lawyer was a few minutes late for the trial. He called, explained that he had the flu and a fever and that he couldn’t come to the trial. The court denied the suspension, the lawyer got into the car and drove for more than an hour to get from Reus to the Barcelona court. He was surprised by a traffic jam, arrived a few minutes late and was also considered to have given up, losing the lawsuit.

The Constitutional Court also rejected this appeal. The right to effective judicial protection used by the teachers who had lost the trial due to the delay of a few minutes, said the guarantee court, “in no case can it protect attitudes lacking due diligence on the part of the interested party or their technical assistance ”. The decision was not peaceful. One of the magistrates, Eugeni Gay, thought that his colleagues had been “excessively formalistic” and that they should have repeated the trial.

This magistrate understood that the lawyer proved that he had the flu and “despite this, he made an effort, after speaking by telephone with the Court, to move.” He arrived 15 minutes after the start of the trial, he presented a medical report and was also involved in a traffic jam, so there was no will to withdraw from the lawsuit. “The delay of the hearing at the last minute and not just 15 minutes would not have caused, in my opinion, a measure injurious to the right to effective judicial protection of the counterparty.”

This magistrate recalled that many times there are delays and waiting in the courts and tribunals, sometimes for reasons attributable to the administration of Justice itself, and that it is not considered a violation of the right to effective judicial protection. “Unfortunately, the delay that occurs on numerous occasions as a consequence of the long waits in the indications that, for reasons often attributable to the judicial body itself, is not considered an attack on the right to effective judicial protection, but a defective operation is verifiable. of the Administration of Justice”, said that particular opinion.

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