Court sets rule for class action lawsuits<\/p>\n
Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court has taken the initiative to set guidelines for
\nlower court judges in handling class action suits in a bid to
\nfill the vacuum of a law on the procedures code.<\/p>\n
Supreme Court deputy chief justice for civil cases Soeharto
\nsaid on Monday that provisions on class action suits stipulated
\nin several existing laws were still unclear.<\/p>\n
"We are now drafting the rules and procedures of the Supreme
\nCourt as a guideline for the judges because class action lawsuits
\nhave been treated differently in each court due to the absence of
\nsuch procedures," Soeharto told reporters at the sidelines of a
\nseminar on the procedure and application of class action lawsuits
\nin Jakarta on Monday.<\/p>\n
The seminar was also attended by legal experts and
\npractitioners from the United States, Canada and Australia.<\/p>\n
The draft of the rules and procedures is expected to be
\ncompleted in May 2002 at the latest. Soeharto said the Indonesian
\nCenter for Environmental Law (ICEL) was involved in drafting the
\nprocedures.<\/p>\n
The class action lawsuit has not been widely used in Indonesia
\nsince it was only introduced here in the late 1990s through the
\nlaws on the environment, consumer protection and forestry, which
\nallow the public to entrust their legal rights to
\nrepresentatives.<\/p>\n
Up until this year, a total of 45 class action lawsuits have
\nbeen filed with the courts throughout the country but only few of
\nthem have been appropriately heard while many of them were
\nrejected due to the lack of knowledge on the part of the judges.<\/p>\n
"That is because both the representatives and the courts have
\nno standard procedures," ICEL co-founder Mas Achmad Santosa said.<\/p>\n
"Many believe that a class action lawsuit belongs to the
\nAnglo-Saxon law system (where a case is judged by a jury) and
\nthat it was not applicable in Indonesia since it practices the
\ncontinental or the civil law system," said Santosa, who was also
\na speaker in the seminar.<\/p>\n
Santosa said that the draft of the Supreme Court's rules and
\nprocedures should also contain the minimum number of victims to
\nbe represented in the lawsuits as one of the basic requirements
\nfor a class action lawsuit.<\/p>\n
"I think nine or 10 victims are enough to make a case besides
\nthe capability to identify the accused in the case and the causal
\nrelation between the accused and the incident," he explained.<\/p>\n
Several non-governmental organizations grouped under the
\nAdvocacy Team for Flood Victims plan to file class action
\nlawsuits against the Jakarta and West Java administrations and
\nreal estate developers in the name of the flood victims in those
\nareas.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/court-sets-rule-for-class-action-lawsuits-1447893297",
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