Court issues ruling on class action

Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Amid the wide misperception and rejection of class action lawsuits, the Supreme Court has issued a regulation requiring the district court and judges to accept class action suits filed by groups who may have been wrongfully victimized in environmental, forestry or consumer protection cases.

The regulation that took effect April 26, 2002, was issued to follow up Law No. 23/1997 on environment, Law No. 8/1999 on consumer protection and Law No. 41/1999 on forestry.

The regulation allows any group of people victimized by actions, policies or activities carried out by the state or private institutions, to file lawsuits through their representatives.

The updated regulation is meant to provide a more effective means for groups in pursing legal action.

Soeharto (no relation to the former president), a deputy to the chief justice on civil matters, said that despite its limited coverage, the regulation allowed a group of people victimized by any policies made by the government and other state institutions and private ones to file a class action suit without fear that their lawsuits would be nullified due to the absence of a law on it.

"Judges at the lower court are obliged to give a positive response to cases in the three fields of environment, consumer protection and forestry. But, any groups of victimized people and their representatives must know its legal procedure," he said recently.

The ruling also stipulates that judges are obliged to investigate and hear class action suits based on violations of the law with strong material evidence and witnesses. The court's verdicts in class action cases must be announced through the mass media to let the group of victimized people know about them.

"In case of financial compensation, judges must make the details of the verdicts public, and must notify the victimized people for the purpose of the compensation distribution," he said, adding that during a trial, the group of plaintiffs would not be required to attend.

He acknowledged that lower courts have frequently turned down class action cases because of the absence of legislation.

"Only the three laws regulate class action suits," he said, adding that the Supreme Court had no legislative authority to make the law.

Class action lawsuits are a new phenomenon in Indonesia -- first introduced in the late 1990s -- so most people, including those in the legal profession, are not accustomed to such cases. So far, 45 cases have been brought to the court but only a few were accepted.

Numerous judges have opposed class action suits which are based on the English Common Law system as inapplicable because the law in Indonesia is based on the continental or civil law system, which does not have a tradition of such lawsuits.

In March, the Central Jakarta District Court ruled in favor of Wardah Hafidz, chairwoman of the Urban Poverty Consortium (UPC), when she, along with an alliance of NGOs filed a class action suit against the Jakarta administration over its failure to cope with the recent flooding that claimed more than 25 lives and caused millions of rupiah in material losses to Jakartans.

The court has also ruled in favor of representatives of a group of people who were evicted in a military-backed land clearance operation in several areas of the city.