Without much publicity, with effect from 1 July 2024, Act No. 99/1963 Coll., the Civil Procedure Code i.e. the legal regulation governing civil court proceedings, has been amended, inter alia, in provisions that do not directly concern the concurrently adopted Act No. 179/2024 Coll., on Civil Collective Proceedings. The amendments made by Act No 180/2024 Coll. (or, more precisely, part one thereof), which do not concern collective action, can be considered quite important, particularly for certain parties to court proceedings and the administrative staff of judicial institutions.
Delivery to the report office
The amendment significantly simplifies the delivery of court documents to persons with a so-called report office, i.e. the address of the municipal office or the municipal district office, registered as an address of their permanent residence. At this point, it should be noted that it is far from just persons who are homeless or who do not have permission from the owner of the premises where they reside to state that address as their permanent residence, but also persons who, for various reasons, do not want to be available for the authorities and official documents, resp. who purposefully avoid such contact (very often because of enforcement actions and fear of bailiffs coming).
Due to the amendment, the courts will make only one attempt to physically deliver official documents to the party to the proceedings residing at a report office, namely the first document to be delivered in the proceedings for which substitute service is not excluded (better known as the so-called fiction of delivery). If the addressee does not take over the document, the court will simply deposit the document and post on its official notice board for 10 days a notice to pick up the document or to inform the court of its another address where official documents are to be delivered. On expiry of that period, the document shall be deemed to have been delivered unless the addressee requests that it to be sent to another address.
The regulation above is not a complete novelty in the Czech legal system; it is basically similar to provisions of Section 56a of Act No. 120/2001 Coll., on judicial officers and enforcement activities (the Enforcement Code) and amendments to other acts, according to which the judicial officers proceed when delivering documents to parties to the proceedings with effect from 1 January 2022.
Changes to payment orders regulation
Following the amendment, the Civil Procedure Code now explicitly allows the fiction of delivery also for the payment orders, including electronic payment orders, when they are delivered to the defendant’s data-box, which is the preferred method of service under the law. The fiction of delivery to a data-box occurs on the expiry of ten days period from the date of service, if the authorised person does not log in within that period, while the fiction of delivery does not occur on Saturday, Sunday or public holiday – then the fiction occurs on the next working day. However, the above rule does not apply to the European payment order and the promissory-note payment order, for which substitute service remains inadmissible.
Another change is the abolition of the limit of CZK 1 million for the filing of an action for pecuniary performance with a request for the issuance of an electronic payment order. This change is particularly important from the point of view of the court fee, where for applying for an electronic payment order, the fee is 1% lower than for filing a regular action. However, the voluntary nature of the request for an electronic payment order remains unchanged.
Applicability only to newly initiated proceedings
According to the transitional provisions of Act No.180/2024 Coll., the new legal regulation on the service of court documents to the report office only applies to proceedings initiated after it entered into force, i.e. from 1 July 2024.
The same goes for the changes in the legal regulation of payment orders, i.e. if the proceedings was initiated before 1 July 2024, the new rules does not apply thereto and the fiction of delivery of the payment order remains inadmissible. In the case of the abolition of the limit on the amount applied for with a request for an electronic payment order, this is rather a statement of the obvious, since it was not possible to apply for payment of a higher amount in this way until the date of the amendment anyway.
Impacts and evaluation
Due to the new rules on delivery to the report office, the described amendment to the Civil Procedure Code is expected to result in significant savings in the costs of service of court documents,. This change is probably the right way to go, also given the principle of vigilantibus iura scripta sunt, where ensuring at least basic accessibility for judicial authorities can be understood as an a priori manifestation of the interest of a natural person in its rights as a potential party to the proceedings. I dare to suggest that most persons who state the address of the report office as their permanent residence will not even register the amendment in question. The change of rules of service to the report office may be perceived negatively only by the providers of delivery services due to the reduction of demand, or also by the administrative staff of the courts operating the official notice boards. On the other hand, a significant part of the administrative operations connected with the service of documents will be removed.
More controversial is the admission of the fiction of delivery of payment orders for the owners of data-boxes, especially for those who do not use their data-boxes actively. In this respect, the debate is particularly focused on those natural persons who have been automatically provided with data-boxes without request. It is true that currently, the ID numbers of the data-boxes of natural persons are not publicly available, but this was the case in the past and it certainly cannot be ruled out that the ID numbers may still be available, albeit not in an official way, which raises some concerns about the abusability of the fiction of delivery of payment orders.
The abolition of the limit of the financial amount for filing an action with request for the issuance of an electronic payment order is a logical and positive step. The limit made virtually no sense at all.
Should you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us.
PhDr. Mgr. Jan Ptáčník, Senior Attorney – ptacnik@plegal.cz
8. 8. 2024