ABU DHABI // Recent increases in court fees for filing lawsuits have lead to more people seeking alternative resolutions, judicial officials have revealed.
When a lawsuit is filed against another party in court, whether commercial over business disputes, civil, labour or personal status (like divorce, allowance or custody issues) the case has to go through the Alternative Solutions and Resolving Disputes section at the Judicial Department.
While some clients generally prefer to end their disputes at that stage more and more have been seeking out-of-court resolutions since the court fees increased.
Counsellor Khuloud Al Thaheri, head of the section, said some cases even return to them after going to court.
“Some cases insist on reaching courts, but once there they are faced with many obstacles like fees ... they then choose to come back to us. And we receive them, the option is always available.”
While court cases take months to be resolved, at the section it takes between 10 days to a month.
“Some are resolved since the first session, those that take longer reach one month by most.”
“Even compared to other countries this is a very short period of time. I was at a conference in Paris and they mentioned 60 and 90 days for such procedures.”
Moreover, the alternative solutions decision is considered a final verdict, whereas a court verdict can be appealed.
A total of 4389 of the 13,475 lawsuits looked up at the section this year so far were resolved while in 2013 around 8076 cases were resolved out of 27,964 throughout the year.
She explained that the goal of the judicial department is to preserve time and resources by finding solutions for disputes before they go to court.
For example, 82 per cent of the family dispute cases were resolved out of court and 14 per cent of commercial disputes.
She said that those who insist on going forward to court are mostly driven by a grudge, or their case is too complicated to be resolved at the reconciliation department.
hdajani@thenational.ae
