Phuket Opinion: Finding A Cure For Overloaded Courts

[Lite Beer]

Phuket Opinion: Finding a cure for overloaded courts
Phuket Gazette -

Chief Judge at Phuket Provincial Court Parinya Chaowalittawin is worried about the burden his courts are carrying. Photo: Chutharat Plerin

Parinya Chaowalittawin, 45, took up the position of Chief Judge at Phuket Provincial Court on April 1. Originally from Trang, Judge Parinya has Bachelor’s of Law, Barrister-at-law and Master of Law degree from Ramkhamhaeng University. He has served as a judge for 17 years. Here, he explains what needs to be done to help clear the backlog of cases at Phuket Court.

PHUKET: Civil cases in Phuket are quite different from those in other provinces. Here, they involve much more money and there are more cases about land ownership. Resolving land ownership is very complicated.

Land in Phuket is very valuable, and the less land there is available – after all, Phuket is an island – the harder people fight for it and the more complicated the cases become.

Having foreigners involved in court cases complicates matters further.

Such cases take a long time to finish and many people are willing to take their cases to the Civil Court, the Appeals Court and even the Supreme Court.

In Phuket, our courts are overloaded. From 2008 to 2012, the number of cases to be heard rose dramatically, and is likely to keep going up. In 2008 there were 8,839 cases heard; in 2009 there were 10,159 cases; in 2010 it fell to 9,259 cases; but rose again in 2011 to 9,737 cases; and in 2012 there were 10,462 cases.

We have 21 judges to take care of all the cases. We need two more to cope with the workload. I have requested two more judges, but I am still waiting for a reply.

In the meantime, we will try to process cases as quickly as we can. The most important thing is to be fair and equal to everyone, Thais and foreigners.

We have opened a “night court” and a “weekend court” to help clear the backlog of cases. The night court is open from 4:30pm to 8:30pm, Monday through Friday. The weekend court is open from 8:30am to 4:30pm on Saturdays and Sundays.

Now, if people want to have their cases heard outside normal office hours – and if both parties agree – we will assign our judges to hear the case.

We had to open the night court and the weekend court because Phuket does not have a Municipal Court.

The Municipal Court hears cases that carry punishments of not more than three years imprisonment, or a fine of not more than 60,000 baht, and any cases that involve damages of not over 300,000 baht.

I have assigned two judges to work only on Municipal Court equivalent cases to speed the flow. Phuket is now being considered for a Municipal Court, but we do not know when that decision will be made.

What worries me is the drug cases, especially those involving ya ice (crystal methamphetamine).

Statistics show that over the past five years the number of drug cases being heard at the Phuket Court has increased dramatically.

Phuket has a lot of nightclubs, which makes it easy for drug dealers to sell drugs to tourists. Sometimes tourists are even drug dealers.

The police and the courts do their part, but everyone must be involved in keeping an eye on drugs, especially administrative officials. For us, we will do our best to deliver justice to everyone.

Source: http://www.phuketgazette.net/phuket_news/2013/Phuket-Opinion-Finding-a-cure-for-overloaded-courts-21211.html

-- Phuket Gazette 2013-06-02

[belg]

hupla, fault of the foreigners again, is what i read

what about getting rid of the scum first (taxi, tuk tuk, jetski)

or all classified in the garbage directly

[slipperx]

Although probably not in his area of influence, perhaps some amendment to the procedures might help. Also the judges should be more in control of the progress of cases - or at least impose that control if they have it.

The court procedure is something like this from experience:

1. File a claim
2. Claim is sent to Defendant and a hearing date set for mediation.
3. Mediation hearing - often the defendant does not turn up and the case adjourned - sometimes several times if the defence are playing for time - with foreigners time means an increase in cost and may mean deprivation if all your assets are involved since the foreigner will need to uproot and move for safety and the numerous hearings make work difficult as many employers will not accept the necessary time off for the hearings and needed to go through evidence.
4. If there is an interlocutory action such as with land where the claimant asks for the land to be protected from resale or mortgage (another tactic used by defence laywers which if successful makes the case much more difficult for the claimant either meaning a whole new case has to be filed including the new owner who will claim no knowledge of the case and therefore be protected as a buyer in true faith) - then there will be hearings to determine the merit of the grounds of the protection sought which with adjournments take months to resolve (during which time the land will be sold anyway apparently without criminal consequence here in Thailand).
5. Eventually the case proper - frequently 2 years or more for the initial date. Several hearings over several weeks or months for this depending on how complicated the case but the real delays occur in the preceeding procedures.

Bear in mind at each hearing there may be two or three other cases scheduled in both morning and afternoon sessions. The pre main trial hearings are usually scheduled for not more than one am or pm slot during which you will be allocated a couple of hours at best. The lawyers will also be able to curtail hearings if they deem it in their advantage to do so. At this time evidence is given by the various parties, repeated to the judge in Thai if a foreigner is involved who then repeats the evidence as understood into a dictaphone for typing up. No court recorders or anything so things can move a little slowly through this process.

But the real delays occur by the court allowing the lawyers to determine the next hearing date - if there are several lawyers they will huddle together and if they want to delay will just say they are unavailable for each proposed date. Typically the defence will be trying to delay so this is an easy way to make each two hour hearing spaced at 4 months or more apart. A huge waste of time.

The next tactic is for the defendant to move house. The claimant will need to appear even though the case cannot proceed because the summons is returned to court. Adverts in the paper and statutory time limits must be allowed to pass before the case can be rescheduled plus the claimant to serve the summonses all over again. This takes up time for the judge and should be able to be dealt with administratively one would think saving time for the court and expense for the claimant.

Management of court hearings is a huge issue but having hearings scheduled for such short time slots must increase the overall court time taken.

If they want to get through these cases then my suggestion would be to have the hearings scheduled for a longer time slot and for the judges to be more controlling on the dates for subsequent hearings. Also the interlocutories should, in the most part, be able to be dealt with by paperwork rather than a hearing and err on the side of the person who would be affected if not given. After all the claimant has already spent the money putting the case into court and getting himself a decent lawyer - is it fair that the courts allow the defendants to sell of land or mortgage it while the case is being heard? If it were made a more routine process then it could be dealt with without taking up court time in the majority of cases - often several hearings of time!

If it is a criminal case then the defendant will often run away. An arrest warrant will be issued but the police neither actively pursue people subject to an arrest warrant and if they do come across them then an exchange of money will lead to a blind eye. Actually they do not really want to arrest them at all because the cost of transporting the prisoner falls on the station arresting and those costs come out of their budget. They might oblige if you present the prisoner yourself - means you have to find them yourself and pay a policeman to arrest them (if you try to do it yourself you are asking for a counter claim for whatever can be made to stick). Then you will need to pay the arresting station to cover their expense and 20 - 40,000 baht commonly for the 'police fund' for them to bother.

How easily could YOU find someone here if they are Thai and don't want to be found?

Edited June 4, 2013 by slipperx

[slipperx]

On the issue of foreigners.

Phuket has a large number of foreigners and makes a huge amount of money from them. One might think some effort might be made to accommodate these cases given the amount of benefit foreigners bring to Phuket. Translators on hand for instance who are impartial and ensure cases are not derailed by delays.