At Belzuz Abogados S.L.P., as experts in Insurance Law, we receive frequent enquiries and manage numerous procedures in insurance matters, both in and out of court, which means that we strive to keep abreast of legal developments that occur in such a broad branch of law as insurance and civil liability, in order to provide our clients with the highest quality service.

I. Royal Decree-Law 6/2023

In this regard, Royal Decree-Law 6/2023, of 19 December, on measures relating to the public service of justice, the civil service, the local system and patronage, was recently approved. By means of this regulation, the Government has used its legislative initiative to regulate by emergency procedure a series of issues that have a very significant effect on the Administration of Justice and the processing of proceedings before it, introducing a series of extremely important new features that must be taken into account from now on when dealing with cases before it, and which will have to be taken into account in the future, in order to ensure that the Administration of Justice is able to provide the best possible service to the public.

This legislative initiative finds its framework in the Spanish Government's Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, which aims to carry out a series of reforms and fulfil a set of requirements to ensure the receipt of funds from the European Union. However, while it is true that this particular reform may be motivated by an opportunity to benefit from European funding, it is fair to point out that it is absolutely necessary to address urgent measures aimed at modernising justice and improving procedural efficiency, as it is common knowledge that the Spanish Administration of Justice suffers from a chronic lack of means that generates innumerable problems and delays. This leads to uncomfortable situations for citizens, legal professionals and civil servants themselves, including judges and Lawyers of the Administration of Justice (LAJs), for whom it is not a good situation to be unable to deal with proceedings with the speed and efficiency that would be desirable due to a lack of the necessary means to deal with the enormous number of cases.

II. Main legislative developments

We will now proceed to examine the main new features contained in RDL 6/2023, bearing in mind that those affecting procedural efficiency in the civil sphere come into force three months after its publication in the Official State Gazette, i.e. on 20 March 2024. We will focus on those novelties that we consider to be of greatest interest to our sphere of activity.

Firstly, a series of amendments to the Civil Procedure Act are introduced which we consider to be of less interest for this article, although they may be relevant for day-to-day practice before the Courts and Tribunals. These include, for example, novelties on the electronic power of attorney for the solicitor, on the process of "swearing of accounts" of legal professionals, who will now be subject to ex officio examination by the judge on the possible existence of abusive clauses in price fixing, elimination of the extraordinary appeal for procedural infringement, ex officio control by the judge of the concurrence of abusive clauses in enforcement proceedings, in the payment order procedure or in precautionary measures in consumer and user proceedings, among others.

In order not to carry out an overly extensive analysis of all the amendments made by RDL 6/2023, we will focus mainly on three areas, devoting a separate section to “witness lawsuits”, which we have already referred to above.

i) New developments in the holding of trials and hearings

RDL 6/2023 has added a new article 129 bis to the Civil Procedure Act. The spirit of the regulation is clear and is committed to the preference for all judicial proceedings to be carried out telematically. With this, what had been done since the beginning of 2020 as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, is given a letter of nature and is incorporated in a way that seems to be definitive, with the Courts and Tribunals currently giving, after the end of the pandemic, very diverse responses to the requests for telematic appearance.

Now, the regulation incorporates a clear desire to give preference to the telematic holding of court appearances, although the interrogation of parties, experts and witnesses and, in general, evidence consisting of depositions or examination of persons, will continue to be preferably face-to-face, so as not to prejudice the principle of immediacy, leaving the judges wide latitude to opt for face-to-face when they consider it appropriate.

ii) Novelties in the area of verbal proceedings

This is one of the most relevant aspects of the new legislation, which extends the scope of the verbal trial to claims not exceeding €15,000, whereas until now it was those not exceeding €6,000.

The law thus embodies a reform that has been talked about for quite some time in judicial circles, which seeks to facilitate greater speed in the processing of proceedings, extending the scope of the verbal trial (which is faster because it establishes shorter deadlines and lacks the intermediate step of the preliminary hearing) up to €15,000.

The scope of verbal proceedings has also been extended to all lawsuits relating to claims for payment in Communities of Houseowners, division of common property and general contracting conditions. The latter may significantly affect consumer actions against banks for claims for mortgage expenses, when the claim is based on the existence of this type of conditions.

iii) New developments regarding appeals

It should be borne in mind that, following the entry into force of the new regulations, appeals will be lodged directly with the body that must hear the appeal (generally, the Provincial Courts) and not with the body that issued the decision that is being appealed (generally, the Courts of First Instance). Therefore, the classic formula "To the First Instance Court for the Provincial Court" will cease to be used or, in very technical terms, the appeal will not be lodged before the Court a quo but directly before the Court ad quem.

On the other hand, as we have already mentioned in passing, the extraordinary appeal for procedural infringement has been abolished and the appeal in cassation has been modified, which may also be lodged against decisions of the Provincial Courts in patent and trademark matters.

The witness lawsuit

Because of its importance, we wanted to deal in a separate section with the regulation of the "witness lawsuit" addressed by RDL 6/2023 through the creation of a new article 438 bis in the Civil Procedure Act.
This introduces into the civil jurisdiction a figure that already exists in the contentious-administrative jurisdiction, which essentially consists of taking a procedure as a reference and requesting the suspension of other proceedings with analogous characteristics that are being processed at the same time until what is happening in the first one is resolved, which is the so-called "witness lawsuit".

The established requirements are essentially three: i) the lawuist must include claims identical to others that are the subject of previous proceedings, ii) the control of transparency or the assessment of the existence of defects of consent must not be mandatory and iii) there must be substantial identity between the general conditions examined in the claim filed and those examined in previous proceedings.

In other words, it is a question of what is requested in one proceeding being, in essence, analogous to what is requested in a previous proceeding. Both the LAJ and the parties can report to the Court, which will decide by Order whether to stay the proceedings until the "witness lawsuit" is decided, which will be decided on a precedential basis. Once it has been decided by a final judgement, the plaintiff may request the extension of the effects of the judgement in the witness proceedings to his own claims.

Conclusions

RDL 6/2023 has tackled a considerable reform of civil jurisdiction, making numerous amendments to the Civil Procedure Act, most of which came into force on 20 March 2024 and which will have to be taken into account from now on in the processing of civil lawsuits.

It is committed to increasing the scope of the verbal trial, which is faster than the ordinary trial, to more matters and up to higher amounts. There is also a commitment to the telematic holding of appearances, the presentation of appeals directly before the higher court, the elimination of the extraordinary appeal for procedural infringement and the regulation of the figure of the "witness procedure" in civil jurisdiction, in a similar way to that which already existed in contentious-administrative jurisdiction.

All these measures are aimed, at least in spirit, at alleviating the already worrying times of the Spanish justice system, weighed down by a historic lack of resources, together with the delays caused by a pandemic from which it has not yet recovered and the numerous strikes of the different civil servants' bodies in the past 2023. It remains to be seen whether the reform achieves the desired result, offering justice that is not only fair, but also effective within reasonable timeframes for all those involved, while at the same time maintaining the necessary procedural guarantees intact.

From the Insurance Law Department of Belzuz Abogados, we are at your disposal to analyse and defend your problem in matters of civil liability and insurance in the most professional and efficient manner.

 Adrián Macias Catalina 

Belzuz Abogados SLP

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