In January 2020, the Supreme People's Court issued the Implementation Measures for the Pilot Reform of diverting complicated and simple civil procedures to carry out a two-year pilot work. As one of the grass-roots courts in the reform pilot, the Yuyao Municipal People's Court in Zhejiang Province adheres to the concept of simplifying procedures without detracting from the rights of the parties, and creates a "three modernizations and three intensifications" small claims work model, realizing a virtuous circle of optimizing the allocation of judicial resources and matching the needs of parties for convenient dispute resolution.
Adhere to the "three modernizations" work mechanism,
Promoting the "Progressive Application" of Small Claims Procedures
In April 2021, a full year had passed since the delivery time agreed upon by a real estate company, but due to network facilities, the new crown epidemic and other issues, buyers and real estate companies have been in conflict.
342 owners have successively sued the Yuyao court, demanding that the real estate company hand over the house and compensate for the related losses. In the process of accepting the case, the judge learned from the parties and found that the contradiction between the original defendant was sharp, and because the early stage took too long, the plaintiff refused to mediate, and only wanted to get the court's judgment as soon as possible. Based on the evidentiary materials submitted by the plaintiff, the judge held that the facts of the case were clear, the evidence was sufficient, and the relationship between rights and obligations was clear, and after obtaining the consent of all the parties, selected two cases with typical claims to apply the small claim procedure for trial.
The judge organizes both parties to convene a pretrial conference.
Use small claims procedures to hold hearings.
After 27 days, the original defendant obtained the effective legal documents of the court. Other buyers with similar demands, after learning of the court's trial results, followed suit and negotiated with the defendants to resolve the dispute.
The dispute, which lasted for less than a year, was properly resolved in less than a month, and the case is a microcosm of the Yuyao court's application of small claims procedures to properly and efficiently resolve mass disputes.
The Yuyao court regularly sorted out and published typical cases of small claims procedures, emphasized the convenience and finality of small claims procedures with the help of specific cases, enhanced the parties' willingness to choose, and significantly increased the rate of consensual application of small claims procedures. Combined with the substantialization of litigation source governance, "model cases" are quickly created through small litigation procedures, and then mass disputes are resolved in batches.
Since the pilot work was carried out, the Yuyao court has organized the Financial Office and more than 30 financial institutions to hold a joint meeting, stipulating in the financial loan contract that the small claims procedure should be applied to the disputes that may occur in the future and meet the conditions for application of the agreement, and explore the "agreed pre-selection model" of small claims procedures. The experience of setting up consensual small claims procedure clauses in standard contracts has been recognized by property companies, tourism service companies and other units, and is generally applicable in their service contracts.
The procedure is selected as "pre-positioned", the pre-trial process is "simplified", and the program transformation is "strict". In the process of promoting the pilot program of diverting complicated and simple procedures in civil litigation reform, the Yuyao court has continuously innovated working mechanisms to promote the "progressive application" of small claims procedures.
"From the moment a party steps into the courtroom, our guidelines for small claims procedures are activated." Yu Guoying, a member of the party group and vice president of the Yuyao Court, said that at present, the court has established a unified guidance mechanism to determine the period for the presentation of evidence for the defense, which is implemented by the litigation service trial team that undertakes case filing and pre-litigation counseling. In the pre-litigation mediation stage, for cases where mediation is unsuccessful, if both parties present agree to waive the evidence and defense period, the case is filed on the spot, the case is divided on the spot, and the hearing is held on the spot; if the parties need to present evidence and the defense period, a reasonable period is determined, and a pretrial conference is convened first, and the case is immediately "deeply diagnosed", the existing evidence exchange is organized, the focus of the dispute is clarified, and the subsequent trial process is simplified.
On September 3, the plaintiff Zhang X and the defendant, an electrical appliance company, were tried in the Mobile Micro Court. During the trial, the judge went straight to the point, debated around the disputed facts, evidence and application of law, clarified the facts of the case, and pronounced the judgment in court. After the end of the trial, Zhang signed and received the legal documents at the mobile micro court, and the whole trial took only 15 minutes.
In May 2020, the Yuyao Court issued the Operational Guidelines of the People's Court of Yuyao City, Zhejiang Province on the Application of Small Claims Procedures (for Trial Implementation) (hereinafter referred to as the "Guidelines"), which specify the handling process and circulation period. In order to fully release the dividends of the reform and avoid the conversion of procedures due to procrastination, the Guidelines also make detailed provisions on the reasons for the conversion procedures in particular, and strictly control the transformation of small litigation procedures, and the conversion rate of small litigation procedures in the court is only 9.93%.
Adhere to the "three intensive" working methods,
Give play to the institutional effect of small claims procedures
As the pilot leader of the small litigation reform of the Yuyao Court, Du Jian, president of the case filing division, pays attention to the management and training of the team. Since the pilot work was launched, the heavy responsibility of the small claims reform pilot has mainly fallen on the case filing division, and the litigation service trial team has concentrated on handling small claims cases. Intensive team handling has also exposed many problems while reducing the circulation of materials and shortening the time spent on case handling. To this end, in the weekly work meeting of the case filing division, the 20-member trial team shared the practical experience of similar cases, summarized the problems found in the pilot process, explored new measures and new methods, and fixed mature practices in relevant documents.
In order to further improve the efficiency of handling small claims, the Yuyao court adopted an intensive trial model, templated application to integrate judicial resources, and uniformly standardized the prosecution template, trial process, and document style of small claims cases, so that the before and after stages of litigation were efficiently connected, forming a synergistic effect of simplifying documents.
For types of cases with clear trial elements, such as motor vehicle traffic accident liability disputes, private lending disputes, and labor disputes, a factor-based complaint is provided to be filled in when prosecuting, and the defendant or a third party acknowledges or denies the content item by item. The trial of the above-mentioned cases is not limited by the traditional stage, and the parties may state the facts, reasons and opinions on the application of law together, and adopt the model of "dispute-investigation-debate" for the disputed matters, and sort them out one by one. At the same time, the litigation documents are simplified, and 32 forms of small litigation documents such as civil mediation documents, non-controversial civil judgments, disputed civil judgments, and small litigation court outlines are produced using "table formats", which are embedded in the trial information system for judges to flexibly choose.
"The promotion and application of small claims procedures has realized the optimal allocation of trial resources, met the needs of parties for efficient and convenient dispute resolution, and effectively highlighted the advantages of the system." Vice President Yu Guoying said, "We must continue to promote the reform pilot work to go deeper and more concrete, fully activate the efficiency of the system, and let the reform dividend benefit the parties." ”
Since 2021, the Yuyao court has applied small claims procedures to try 2,923 cases, with a procedural application rate of 34.31% and an average trial day of 17 days, effectively meeting the needs of parties for efficient and low-cost dispute resolution.
Source: Office of the Leading Group for Judicial Reform of the Supreme People's Court
Editor: Li Gaokai