The Supreme Court is the highest level of court in China, and many people, even foreign lawyers take it for granted that the decisions, rulings, or judgments made by the Supreme Court are final and can’t be changed. When a litigant receives the judgment made by the Supreme Court which is found against him and he has no way to appeal to a higher court, it seems that he has to admit that he lose the case finally. This is, however, definitely not true in China. We still have a chance to overturn the result. That is what exactly I am doing now, trying to change a ruling made by the Supreme Court on behalf of our client.
According to provisions of Chinese civil procedure law and Chinese administrative procedure law, where the Supreme Procuratorate finds that a legal effective judgment or ruling made by the Supreme People’s Court, at any level falls under any of the certain circumstances provided in an article of the said two laws, the Supreme Procuratorate shall lodge an objection with the Supreme Court thereto. The said circumstances have been listed clearly in one article of the laws which are as much as 13 kinds. Generally speaking, they can summarized to four circumstances: one, the litigant get new evidence to prove the facts recognized by the court are not true; second, the court made material mistakes in finding the facts or applying the law; third, the court made procedural mistakes which infringe the litigants’ core procedural rights; fourth, the judge or court clerk took bribery or did under table deal.
You see, don’t admit failure too early, you still have a chance to change all, although the rate of overturning the final judgment is terribly low, but it is better than zero.
When you decide to try the procuratorate way to change the final result, you may need help from a lawyer. I used to work in the procuratorate for five years and know clearly that there are many obstacles in the procedure for a layman. For example, before you file an application for review to the procuratorate, you must file the application of retrial to the corresponding level of court. Only if your application of retrial is overruled by the court, or the court doesn’t retry within legal period or the retrial result is definitely wrong, you can file the application for review to the procuratorate. What’ more, there are time limits for the application. Under some of the certain circumstances, six months after the judgment enters into effect.
Your application for review will surely be accepted by the procuratorate, as long as you submit required legal documents, but acceptance doesn’t mean the procuratorate will support you. The procuratorate will examine all the evidence you submit and review the original judgments, if they decide to support you, they will lodge an objection against the court, and the court must appoint different judges to retry the case under such circumstance. Now you have a chance to change all.