□ Our reporter Huang Jie
Some time ago, a technology company in Beijing encountered a trouble-it had a long-term cooperation with a technology company in Zhengzhou, Henan, but was unable to pay for the goods normally due to the difficulty in capital turnover of the company in Zhengzhou. The company signed a repayment agreement; however, the Zhengzhou company did not pay the fees as agreed in the agreement.
In desperation, the Beijing company filed a lawsuit with the Beijing court.
Unexpectedly, during the trial, the Zhengzhou company did not recognize the repayment agreement submitted by the Beijing company, and proposed that the seal of the Zhengzhou company affixed to the agreement was forged, and asked for the seal to be authenticated.
This made the Beijing company's heart suddenly cool: "We have put in so much money, and this appraisal will have to drag on the case for a year and a half. I really don't know when we will get the money back."
But what the Beijing company did not expect was that the appraisal opinion was obtained in less than half a month, and the case was immediately resolved through mediation.
So efficient, the person in charge of the Beijing company said bluntly: "It's a bit surprising."
This is the result of the Beijing court's promotion of the standardized management of forensic identification, and it is also a microcosm of helping to optimize the business environment.
In recent years, the Beijing Court has continued to deepen the whole-process reform in various fields including case filing, trial, enforcement, litigation services, and trial management, and has introduced a series of measures to provide more high-quality and efficient judicial guarantees for optimizing the business environment.
Reforming the entrusted appraisal procedure
Greatly improved review efficiency
In the dispute between the Beijing company and the Zhengzhou company, why was the expert opinion obtained so quickly?
It turned out that in the court, the undertaking judge showed the parties a "Guide to the Normative Guidelines for Entrusted Forensic Authentication" (hereinafter referred to as the "Guide"), prompting the parties to prepare sample materials in accordance with the content of the "Guide".
The materials prepared by both parties in accordance with the "Guidelines" passed the review at one time. On September 15, 2021, the court officially entrusted the Beijing Great Wall Judicial Appraisal Institute to appraise the official seal of the agreement involved. On September 28, the appraisal institute issued an appraisal opinion, confirming that The official seal is real.
With the favorable evidence of the expert opinion, the judge took no time to carry out further mediation work for the two parties. Zhengzhou company no longer insisted on the evidence, and the two parties quickly reached a mediation agreement, and the defendant fulfilled the agreed obligations in a timely manner.
A "protracted war" expected by the plaintiff was thus quickly resolved.
It is understood that with the rapid economic and social development, the cases entrusted by Beijing courts for appraisal and evaluation are characterized by a large number, rapid growth, and difficulty.
For a long time, the long time for entrusted appraisal and evaluation has always been considered to be an important part of the "drag" litigation process, and it is also one of the problems that the parties have strongly reflected.
In this regard, Liu Shuangyu, vice president of the Beijing Higher People's Court, explained: "Because the appraisal and evaluation are highly specialized, when the parties and lawyers apply for appraisal to the court, they often encounter inaccurate selection of types, unclear entrusted matters, and incomplete appraisal materials. However, as judges, it is difficult for judges to fully grasp the knowledge of different professional fields, so it often results in repeated and long time between application, review and entrustment.”
Han Junheng, a lawyer from Beijing Zhongyin Law Firm who has practiced for many years, felt deeply: "The field of forensic appraisal is too professional. When applying for appraisal, which appraisal items should be applied for, how to describe the appraisal needs, and what materials to provide, it was not very clear before. Often. It was the application that was submitted, but because of the regulation problem, it came back after a circle, wasting a lot of time."
As an appraiser, Yang Baofeng is also distressed: "If the entrustment is not standardized, we have to communicate with the court repeatedly and explain to the parties. A lot of time is wasted on these procedural work, which also leads to delays in the judicial process."
According to the statistics of the Beijing Court, before that, the time for preliminary preparation and supplementary materials from the parties' application for appraisal to the review and acceptance by the appraisal agency accounted for about 70% of the total appraisal and evaluation time.
In response to this situation, in the process of serving small, medium and micro enterprises and optimizing the business environment, the Beijing Court has listed the standardization of entrusted appraisal procedures as a key reform issue.
Since 2018, the Beijing High Court and the Municipal Bureau of Justice have jointly promoted the standardized management of forensic appraisal work, issued a series of institutional documents, strictly controlled key process nodes such as external entrustment and supplementary appraisal materials, and established a full-time team in the city's courts to review the entrustment. The appraisal work implements intensive management, and at the same time builds an online full-process entrusted appraisal platform.
In the process of promoting various reforms, the Beijing Higher People's Court and the Municipal Bureau of Justice jointly issued the country's first "Guide" on September 8, 2021.
The "Guide" focuses on the two major identification items of forensic clinical practice and document fingerprints, and refines 21 sub-categories of forensic identification under these two major categories. It guides the parties one by one to understand how to file an identification application, how to determine the entrusted matters, and how to prepare identification materials. By regulating the entrusted forensic appraisal work, we can promote the quality and efficiency of the trial work, and reduce the burden of litigation by the parties.
"The biggest change brought about by the "Guidelines" is to reduce the 'idling' of the identification process, and the application materials will no longer 'go around in circles'," said Han Junheng.
Since the issuance of the "Guide", the Beijing Court has greatly improved the review efficiency from the time when the parties applied for appraisal to the external entrustment procedures, shortened by 53.9% year-on-year, and the appraisal and evaluation cycle for general cases by professional institutions has gradually decreased from 109 days in early 2018 to about 30 days. , to gain time for the small, medium and micro enterprises that were dragged into the lawsuit and gain more chances of survival.
In the recently released 5.0 reform measures to optimize the business environment, the Beijing Court stated that it will continue to work with relevant industry associations to formulate and issue guidelines for entrusted appraisal and evaluation, and to strengthen the normative management of the overall time used for appraisal and evaluation, entrusted matters, acceptance standards and appraisal materials. .
Fast Dispute Resolution Mechanism
Bailout for SMEs
In an equity subscription dispute with many controversial points and a huge amount of financing, how long does it take from filing the case to the first-instance judgment?
The answer from the People's Court of Fengtai District, Beijing is: less than 3 months.
It turned out that a private enterprise listed on the New Third Board in Beijing Fengtai Science and Technology Park signed a "Share Subscription Agreement" with the defendant, an electronics company in Dongguan, Guangdong, in order to expand its new energy electric vehicle production capacity.
But after the agreement was signed, the Dongguan company had to give up the investment due to market prospect expectations and other reasons, and refused to pay more than 30 million yuan of investment on the grounds that the agreement signed by both parties had not come into effect.
"The case involves a lot of legal disputes, but the two sides have a good foundation for cooperation before, so I want to try mediation first." Xu Chong, president of the Commercial Division of Fengtai Court, said that it is not difficult to get the case out, but judicial It should be considered which path is most beneficial to the development of the enterprise.
Taking advantage of the commercial tribunal's location in the science and technology park, Xu Chong invited the park's management committee to participate in the work, but because the settlement of another dispute between the two parties affected the mediation, he had to give up.
Xu Chong immediately accelerated the progress of the trial, and on the premise of fully demonstrating the validity of the "Share Subscription Agreement", ordered the defendant to continue to perform the capital contribution obligations stipulated in the agreement, and paid 4.59 million yuan in liquidated damages.
This result has allowed Beijing science and technology enterprises to see the dawn of development again.
Xu Chong told reporters that the "fast" case handling relies on the "mediation + quick judgment" working mechanism implemented by the Fengtai Court.
In response to the judicial service needs of small, medium and micro enterprises, the Fengtai District Court and the District Federation of Industry and Commerce jointly established the "Private Enterprise Property Rights Protection Mediation Room". The court hired mediators and attracted professional commercial mediation agencies to participate in it.
For cases involving small, medium and micro enterprises, the case filing court will transfer the cases that meet the pre-litigation mediation requirements to the mediation room according to the requirements for the separation of complex and simple cases, and invite corresponding institutions to participate in mediation according to different industries. .
Once it is determined that mediation cannot be made, it shall be immediately transferred to the Commercial Tribunal, taking advantage of the situation that has been identified in the mediation in the early stage to achieve quick trial and quick settlement.
According to statistics, the "Private Enterprise Property Rights Protection Mediation Room" in Fengtai District will successfully mediate more than 160 cases in 2021, involving more than 50 million yuan.
Of all the cases tried by the Commercial Tribunal, over 60% have gone through front-end mediation, and the overall trial time limit for commercial cases has increased by 11.6%.
Today, the brand of "private enterprise property rights protection and mediation room" is taking root in Beijing No. 1 Intermediate Court, Mentougou, Shijingshan, Tongzhou and other courts. It has continuously provided services for small, medium and micro enterprises through various mechanisms such as daily governance and coordination and joint dispute resolution. Dispute resolution to speed up and increase efficiency.
The reporter learned from the Beijing High Court that the implementation of a faster dispute resolution mechanism has always been an important part of the Beijing court service to optimize the business environment.
In 2021, Beijing's courts will continue to implement the "multiple mediation + quick adjudication" working mechanism, recruiting 137 units as specially invited mediation organizations of the court, and 495 specially invited mediators into the quick adjudication team; the city's grassroots courts have successfully mediated cases and More than 410,000 cases were settled expeditiously, and 72.56% of civil and commercial disputes were resolved with 21.4% of civil and commercial judges.
Strengthen the construction of smart courts
Speeding up the whole process of litigation
During the epidemic, a second-instance case of a dispute over the establishment of an enterprise was brought to the Beijing Third Intermediate People's Court.
In this case, two natural persons signed an investment agreement with a small and medium-sized enterprise in Beijing to jointly establish a new target company, during which a dispute arose.
The two appellants in this case are both in Fujian, and the lawyers they entrusted are in Guangdong, and the Beijing company also entrusted lawyers in Fujian, which means that all the participants in the lawsuit are out of town.
In the face of this situation, the undertaking judge Tian Lu decided to start the "cloud court".
On the basis of obtaining the consent of all parties and fully instructing all parties to use methods in the early stage, the trial proceeded smoothly, and the entire trial process was completed in only one hour.
It is understood that since the outbreak of the epidemic in early 2020, the "Beijing Cloud Court" has been continuously upgraded and improved, and now it can meet the requirements of 400 courts to hold court sessions at the same time.
Not only that, various litigation services such as online case filing, online mediation, and online preservation have all been opened, realizing the whole process of online litigation.
According to statistics, in 2021, the online filing rate of courts in Beijing will reach 71.2%, a year-on-year increase of 55.6%, and online trials will account for 67.4% of the total number of trials.
In this regard, Beijing lawyer Tang Minzhi said with deep feeling: "Now for Beijing lawyers, online court hearings have become a very common and accustomed way of court hearing. It is convenient and fast, and the application is more and more smooth."
Another thing that deeply touched Tang Minzhi was the solution to the problem of "difficulty in marking papers": "For lawyers, marking papers was a very difficult problem. Lawyers should contact the court's archives and make an appointment. If If there are too many appointments, it takes a lot of time and transportation costs for lawyers. Now lawyers can apply online directly while sitting in the office. After the court has reviewed online, lawyers can directly check the electronic file dossier materials online. do not."
It is understood that in order to solve the problem of "difficulty in reading files", the Beijing Court has continuously promoted the simultaneous generation and in-depth application of electronic files with the case.
The reporter saw at the Beijing Higher Court's Electronic File Generation Center that various information such as the generation, retrieval, and filing of court files were displayed on the screen in real time.
The staff of the center are busy scanning, processing and verifying the paper files.
Through the electronic file generation center, the documents submitted in the litigation and the litigation activities implemented can be simultaneously converted into electronic data to generate electronic files.
This not only provides convenience for the judge to handle the case, but also lays a solid foundation for the later parties to consult the electronic file and file information.
At present, 10 courts in Beijing have established electronic file generation centers, and judges have initially developed the work habit of relying on electronic files for the whole process of paperless case handling.
Liu Shuangyu said that in the 5.0 version of the reform measures to optimize the business environment, the Beijing Court will further strengthen the construction of smart courts, strive to optimize the litigation experience of market players, continue to deepen the reform of the separation of complex and simple civil litigation, continue to strengthen the management of trial quality and efficiency, and further Improve supporting measures such as quantitative evaluation of appraisal institutions, and promote the speed and efficiency of the whole process of litigation.
Comics / Gao Yue