The High Inspector of Justice has completed the thematic inspection “On the procedure for reasoning and delivery of written court decisions of the Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction Tiranë, (civil chamber) and the Administrative Court of First Instance Tiranë”, for the period from September 1st to December 31st, 2022.
This inspection is part of the HIJ Inspections plan for 2023, in exercising the function of performing institutional and thematic inspections on every aspect of the work of courts, judicial administration, prosecution offices and the prosecution administration.
According to the inspection, during the inspection period September-December 2022, in the Administrative Court of First Instance Tiranë, 93.5% of the written decisions result to have been reasoned and delivered to the secretariat, within the legal deadline of seven days. Other decisions were delivered within 10, 18 days and one decision was delivered within 107 days.
According to the thematic inspection in the Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction Tiranë, it results that the total number of cases in this Court for 2020 was 34,382 cases. The court has 39 judges out of 76 provided for in the decree. The average workload of a judge in the Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction Tiranë, is 1361 cases per year. During the inspection period from September 1st – December 31st, 2022, in the Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction Tiranë, 1631 decisions result to have been delivered within the deadline of 20 days, while 981 decisions result to have been delivered out of deadline.
Therefore, it was found that despite the deadlines provided for in the civil procedural law (Article 308 of the CPC), these deadlines in most cases, have not been met by the judges during the exercise of their functions.
Nevertheless, the High Inspector of Justice believes that taking into account the unusually high judicial vacancies in courts and the large number of cases pending to be reviewed, a more cautious approach should be taken. The workload that accompanies magistrates today, also due to the process of re-evaluation of judges and prosecutors, is an objective criterion, which is taken into account with the total number of civil cases and the time needed to reason the judicial decisions given.
In consideration of the above, the High Inspector of Justice assesses that not in any case will the non-compliance with the deadlines set by the procedural legislation, and in particular the deadlines provided for delivering within a reasonable time the reasoned decisions, be considered a possible disciplinary violation. A violation is considered as such when there is lack of care and efficiency, negligence or lack of professional ability that cross the “boundary of reasonableness” and such behavior cannot be justified by the magistrate. The delay in reasoning and delivering written decisions, constitutes a disciplinary violation when it is repetitive, serious and unjustified, as well as when it does not result from any situation which is beyond the magistrate control and which may be related to the malfunctioning of the judicial system.
In this context, in order to reach the conclusion if the magistrates have undertaken actions/omissions which may constitute a disciplinary violation, or actions/omissions related to
their professional activity, we must analyze case by case through a verification process or a disciplinary investigation, all the cases where the deadline for reasoning and delivering the written court decision is exceeded, a deadline which is considered a “reasonable time” for the judge/court to deliver the final reasoned decision.
In the Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction Tiranë, 89% of the decisions result to have been delivered within the 120-day deadline, which is considered in most cases the reasonable time needed by the judge/court to deliver the final reasoned decision. Consequently, only for the Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction Tiranë, and only for the inspection period September 1st -December 31st, 2022, the High Inspector of Justice estimates that for the purpose of reaching the conclusion if there is a disciplinary violation, the reasonable time that the judge/court needs to deliver the final written reasoned decision, was 120 days.
Based on this reasoning and analysis, the inspection report recommends:
To begin the verifications, pursuant to law no. 96/2016 “On the status of judges and prosecutors in the Republic of Albania”, as amended, to ascertain whether there are sufficient facts for the initiation of the disciplinary investigation:
– for the judge of the Administrative Court of the First Instance Tiranë, for the delivery of decision which has been reasoned and delivered to the secretariat within 107 days;
– for the judges of the Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction Tiranë, for the decisions which have been reasoned and delivered to the secretariat within 120 days;
– and for the judges of the Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction Tiranë, for the decisions which were not delivered to the secretariat until 15.05.2023.
Click here to read the full report on this thematic inspection.