The meeting on amendments to Civil Procedure Code of Georgia

On 24th of March 2015 working meeting with judges was held in hotel “Ambasador”, organized by the “Association of Law Firms of Georgia”. The meeting aimed discussion of amendments of Civil Procedural Code of Georgia. Members of Chargeisvhili Law Inn together with lawyers of other law firms, which are members of “Association of Law Firms of Georgia”, have been working on these amendments since October 2014.  Rory D. Bahadur, professor of Washburn University and the guest expert of National Business Center of Free University of Tbilisi stated his opinion and made comments on the draft project of amendments. The initiative to amend the civil procedure code of Georgia was arisen to ensure adversary between the parties. Offered amendments will make the litigation less time consuming.  With the aims amendments refine the rules of: explanation of parties, examination of a witness, and procedure of appointing expert. It is also offered to use a model of temporary and basic provisional measures from Civil Procedural Code of USA. Members of Association have initiative that only advocates should have the right to represent party in the court of first instance. Except the case when a party wants to stand before the court by itself or wants to be represented by its family member. Members also think that if a party is represented in court with an advocate and the party approves advocates right of representation it has to be enough for a judge to establish free will of the party and authority of the advocate. Thus, there should not be need of any additional power of attorney approved by a notary to be provided before the court. The amendment project also involves specification of advocate’s fees, regulations about the process renew in case of default judgment; it is planned to improve articles regarding mediation and settlement as well. It is important to discuss the draft project with judges, as their comments and ideas need to be considered to improve the prepared draft project of amendments by advocates.  Members of “Association of Law Firms of Georgia” are continuing working on the draft project, which will be later on presented to private law reform enforcing consulting council of Ministry of Justice of Georgia, to the team working on procedural law matters. On a working meeting the draft project of amendments in Civil Procedural Code of Georgia was supported by USAID and JILEP.