Shifting to issue-based court trials

IT IS WELL-KNOWN that Philippine court dockets are heavily congested. The National Statistical Coordination Board has reported that lower courts have to handle more than one million cases in a year or an average of around 4,221 cases per working day. While the total inflow of cases in the lower courts has declined, the total outflow of cases has likewise been on a downtrend. The Supreme Court’s records revealed that 21% of cases take two to five years to end and 13% were only resolved after five years. This delay has resulted in the general distrust and lack of confidence in our court system.

To unclog the court dockets, the Supreme Court announced the piloting of a new system for speedy court trials, the product of the National Conference for the Revision of the Rules of Civil Procedure headed by retired Justice Roberto A. Abad.

The Supreme Court has directed the pilot testing of Rules 22 and 24 of the draft Revised Rules of Civil Procedure (Revised Rules) in select lower courts in Quezon City, Makati City, Angeles City, Iloilo City, Davao City and Cebu City beginning Feb. 23, 2015.

More than cosmetic changes, the Revised Rules introduce a major shift in procedural philosophy -- from the adversarial system to an inquisitorial system where trial court judges have a more active role in the investigation and prosecution of cases.

Instead of the pre-trial brief required to be filed under the 1997 Revised Rules of Procedure, drafts of the Terms of Reference (TOR) are required under the Revised Rules. The TOR, which control the scope of trial, contain a summary of admitted and established facts; a statement of the factual issues that the conflicting evidence of the parties present; a list of witnesses from either side who are competent to testify on each of the factual issues in the case; and a statement of the legal issues that the case presents. Only relevant and significant issues, which will help decide the case on its merits, will be tried.

The court will set the preliminary conference only after the court’s preparation of the TOR, during which the court, in consultation with the parties and their counsels, whose presence are required, will determine if there is a need to make changes in the contents or wordings of the TOR. If so, the court will enter the changes on the document.

An Order of Trial will be issued toward the end of the preliminary conference fixing the order in which the issues are to be tried; identifying the witnesses who need to be present to testify on each of the issues; setting the specific dates for reception of evidence; determining whether the circumstances warrant an alternate or face-to-face trial and, in the latter case, whether it shall be simple or regular and who among the witnesses are exempt from face-to-face examination; and determining the need to refer certain issues to trial by commissioners.

Departing from the traditional mode of trial where the complainant first adduces evidence in support of his complaint before allowing the defendant to adduce evidence in his defense, Rule 24 on Trial of Issues allows the judge to hear all the evidence from both sides on a disputed issue, or two or more closely related issues, before moving on to the next issue.

During the Trial of Issues, the court may try issues in the TOR either by alternate or face-to-face trial. The parties may also agree to have an alternate trial instead of face-to-face trial.

In an alternate trial, the parties take turns in presenting their witnesses with respect to each factual issue as stated in the Order of Trial. In a face-to-face trial, witnesses from the contending sides appear together before the court, sit face-to-face around a table in a non-adversarial environment, and answer questions first from the court and thereafter from the parties’ counsels with respect to the factual issue under consideration. Where the issues are complex or numerous and the evidence from both sides consists of testimonies of several witnesses or involve numerous pieces of evidence, the court will hold a regular face-to-face trial with hearings spread over a period. Where the issues are simple and few, however, the court will conduct a simple one-time face-to-face trial with an oral argument rendered at the end of such trial.

Finally, in order to ensure that the new issue-based approach will not be punctuated with delays, the Revised Rules provide that the dates set for trials shall not be transferable except on the ground of a fortuitous event or serious illness of a counsel or witness.

With all the foregoing, the objective of empowering the judge to take a direct role in examining the witnesses during the trial and to maximize the court’s time and shorten the trial, without sacrificing the quality of hearing and adjudication, will hopefully be achieved.

Dyan Danika G. Lim is a senior associate of the Litigation and Dispute Resolution Department of the Angara Abello Concepcion Regala & Cruz Law Offices (ACCRALAW).

dglim@accralaw.com

source:  Businessworld