Massimo Vaccari
(Judge of the Court of Verona)
In the last few days is come back powerfully to the fore the debate on the cd short trial, after the government announced its intention to quickly approve the draft law, which was fired by the Senate in January of this year, the Chamber.
The impact that this latest reform, if it enters into force in its current form, will have on the criminal trial were discussed by leading experts on newspapers. Less known are the negative effects it can have in civil proceedings and I therefore consider it appropriate to offer some food for thought in this regard, based on my experience as a prosecutor dedicated to the civilian sector.
First you should clarify that the bill under consideration does not alter the code of civil procedure but the law 89/2001, better known as the Pinto Act, which recognizes a compensation to those who have suffered process of no longer reasonable.
In a nutshell, the law will set the process in two short years, increasing to three, the maximum period within which this must take place each of the different degrees of civil proceedings (first instance, appeal and cassation), taking as a starting point of the first hearing and the final moment of the measure that defines the legal proceedings.
Once this deadline has passed without that there has been a decision by the judge, the process will continue normally, but its duration is no longer reasonable and that the party may seek compensation under the Pinto Act, provided that has previously submitted to the competent court instance Urges the definition of the proceedings that you regretted the slow pace.
E 'this instance that, in practice, the intentions of the legislature, should determine the acceleration of the proceedings because, if it is submitted, the court will be required to set the hearings that were required at intervals not exceeding fifteen days apart.
Now this mechanism does not take into account that the length of civil proceedings depends not only on the attitude of the parties and the court but also by a number of unpredictable variables and objectively unavoidable, as the complexity of the facts to be established, the number of shares, the procedural flaws that may occur during them. E 'for this reason that, at present, to determine if a process has had a reasonable time or not one can not ignore an examination of the case.
The new rules however do not consider the peculiarities of each process and its application will be increasingly problematic in those processes that require a larger asset evidence, it is impossible to contain pre-defined times, if not at risk of gaps and errors.
In these cases the rules approved by the Senate, if not amended, not only compress the time of trial but also the right of defense that had an interest, or necessity of a thorough and timely investigation activities reasonable, but can not oppose the request for acceleration of the process, not being provided their consent on that point.
In this perspective even the instance of acceleration can be exploited by the party, knowing that he was wrong, he did not want to fully establish the facts.
yet the bill is likely to lead to disparities in treatment are difficult to justify.
The judge, in fact, may be in the position to give priority to causes of low value, to the detriment of other, more important, economically or socially, if only in the first instance should be presented to the acceleration.
It 'easy to predict, then, that where the bodies were to be numerous, will be almost impossible to meet the deadlines set by the bill, because they will all be treated with equal speed, with the further consequence that, for all accrued the right to obtain compensation under Pinto Act.
Given these many problems really do not see what would be the benefits of the rules currently in gestation, especially if one considers that only in July 2009, entered into force a reform of the Code of Civil Procedure which, among the main purpose, to shorten the civil action (think of the possibility for the court to impose financial penalties to the party that has acted or resisted in bad faith or opinion with gross negligence, the reduction of time limits for carrying out certain procedural activities, the introduction of the summary trial).
However many commentators have agreed that even the latter will change in the law to make good the delay of civil justice that often, though not always, are objectively intolerable.
fact, to determine the current conditions of civil justice, as has been shown several times on several levels, competing on the one hand, the high rate of litigation of the Italians and, second, the chronic shortage of personnel of the registry , a distribution over the territory of the courts and, in some districts of the Court of Appeals, inadequate staffing of the judiciary than the number of population.
To affect such structural and organizational factors are needed in deep there was no indication in the draft law on the process soon.
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