The Keeper of the Seals presented his action plan resulting from the Estates General of Justice. The objective is clear: to reconcile the French with their exhausted and dying judicial system. However, it is advisable not to give in to the illusion of amicable agreement to believe that we are going to unclog the courts and shorten the timeframes for civil justice.
As victims’ lawyers and specialists in personal injury law, we can only welcome at first glance the announced increase in the justice budget as well as the announcement of massive recruitment of 1,500 additional magistrates and 1,500 court clerks. On the other hand, one of the promises of the Keeper of the Seals leaves us perplexed: it is the commitment, somewhat utopian, to reduce by half, within 4 years, the duration of civil proceedings. If criminal justice permanently focuses the interest of the media and public opinion, civil justice generally arouses little interest even though it is the one that our fellow citizens encounter on a daily basis.
Our customers, road accident victims, victims of medical errors or assault very often wait very long years before obtaining the slightest legal decision and therefore the slightest compensation. The situation today has reached an almost cataclysmic point. One of the best illustrations of the failure of civil justice is undoubtedly the Nanterre court. In personal injury law, this jurisdiction experiences intense activity due to the presence within its jurisdiction of the head offices of major insurance companies. While the quality of the decisions rendered cannot be criticized, it must be noted that the delays in processing legal claims are purely and simply inadmissible and completely contrary to the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time guaranteed by the European Convention on human rights.
In one of our current files, a summons was issued in 2019 relating to a claim for compensation from our client who was the victim of a road accident in 2017. The investigation procedure, qualified in civil proceedings as a in good condition, will have lasted almost 2 years. It was only in November 2021 that the pre-trial judge decided to close the investigation and set a date for the hearing. During this time, the file is frozen. It is no longer possible to change anything in the submitted claim or update it. It would therefore be imperative that the time between the closing order and the date of the pleading be as short as possible so as not to leave the litigant in a perilous situation. However, in our file, as in most of our files before Nanterre, it is at 14 months that the date of pleading was fixed. So here we are with a date for pleadings set for the month of January 2023. Last December, an unusual fact, a new procedural bulletin informs us that due to the absolute need to mobilize civil magistrates at the criminal hearings of the judicial court of Nanterre which is on the verge of implosion, the scheduled civil hearings will be postponed until November 2023. How to explain this to the victim of a traffic accident for whom obtaining compensation is not merely useful, but absolutely vital? For him, it’s a double penalty!
The case of the Nanterre court is unfortunately not isolated. The same situation occurs in Bobigny or Évry. This is not the exclusive fact of the jurisdictions of the Paris region either. The case of the Niort court could be cited as an example of the slowness of civil proceedings which often exceed 3 years between the time of the summons and the time a judgment is rendered.
What worries us in the announcement of the Minister of Justice is not so much the stated objective, it is above all the lack of explanation of the concrete means that will be implemented. For 20 years now, each policy for combating judicial congestion has been summed up by the same reasoning: to settle legal disputes and shorten delays, nothing better than limiting access to the judge by multiplying the procedural constraints, and systematically directing towards an amicable preliminary. This strategy has shown its inefficiency for several reasons. By limiting access to the judge, we multiply the distrust of the litigant with regard to the judicial system. Not being able to access the judge means no longer being able to believe in this justice.
The other shortcoming would be to believe that it is absolutely necessary to direct civil litigation towards a mandatory amicable phase. Our rulers must not forget that the effectiveness of the process can only be guaranteed if the litigation system is totally efficient. The aim of the judicial system is above all to restore a balance between the strong party and the injured party. However, the stronger party will only play the amicable game if it knows that, failing this, the aggrieved party will be able to compel it to do so quickly and efficiently through the litigation system. Today, the failure of the litigation system does nothing but serve the recourse to amicable justice.
If all legal professionals are impatiently awaiting the fulfillment of the promises of the Keeper of the Seals, it is above all to the litigant and to each of the French people that the government must make these announcements efficient. In the absence of effective justice, the balance of society as a whole would be in danger.
