On September 12, 2016, the Supreme People’s Court promulgated its Several Opinions on Further Promoting the Separation of Complicated Cases from Simple Ones and Optimizing the Allocation of Judicial Resources. By virtue of these opinions, the Supreme Court calls for the establishment of the speedy trial in administrative litigations as well as utilizing and developing the existing speedy trial in civil and criminal litigations to expedite the judicial procedures.
The Opinions also target on exploring the implementation of the model trial on series cases or class actions. Besides, in order to reduce the litigation cost and speed the transfer of case files between courts at different levels or within different jurisdictions, the Supreme Court encourages the parties to the case and the counsels to provide digital legal instruments and materials during litigations. This really will lighten the load for the parties and the counsels since they have always been asked to provide and carry a huge bundle of documents to attend the court hearings even though the courtrooms are now equipped with high-tech digital devices and the portable devices are so developed far beyond our imagination. I remembered once we used more than 10 big paper boxes to hold the copies of evidence and used a handcart to move all of them into the courtroom. After spending time and cost on preparing and transporting those copies, the panel did not review them all. Actually, in most cases, only a few pages of an entire document were essential for the counsel to argue for their stances and for the panel to deliberate the case during the court session, and other pages are required to be copied just for satisfying the evidence submission requirements set up by the court.
Furthermore, the Opinions weigh and recognize the important role of attorneys in litigations. For the purpose of lowering the rates of false trial, the Supreme Court expects to utilize the leverage effects caused by the allocation of the attorney fee to induce the parties to cases rationally select appropriate legal ways to settle their disputes. In the event any misconduct including abuse of litigious rights constituted by any party caused any damage to the opposing party or the third party, the party at fault should be required to bear the attorney fee according to the Opinions.