Posted in: Coronavirus/Covid-19 Articles
With regard to legal actions during the State of Alarm, all clients should be advised that in Spain, following the recent Royal Decree, all Courts are currently closed except urgent criminal issues or labour issues.
On one hand, this unfortunately means a suspension of legal proceedings. Thus, unfortunately, those clients that had been waiting for some time for hearings and for Resolutions, these will consequently be delayed. This is very frustrating and of course, once Courts open, there will be a backlog. The Courts will be extremely busy trying to catch up on legal actions during the State of Alarm and we will have to be patient. Contacting them for any news is not possible and of course events are out of our control.
However, in the wider scheme of things, this will pass and eventually court proceedings will start again. We will be notified of new hearing dates. Also when waiting for Resolutions, we will be advised of those in due course also.
Many clients are concerned about the time limitation for legal actions. For example, some have a medical negligence case which need expert doctor’s reports. Of course, in these current dreadful times, it is impossible to move forward with these cases. However, during the “lockdown” the time limitation of all legal actions is suspended. Thus we have the extra time.
The only problem is that all actions arising from before 5th October 2015 expire anyway on the 5th October 2020. This is due to a law change in October 2015 as explained in our article on time limitation. Therefore clients need to be careful if they have a case they wish to pursue, as we will need to start with a legal letter stopping the time limitation before October 2020.
The positives regarding legal actions during the State of Alarm is that our solicitors currently have more time (as work restricted) to study your paperwork and advise if you have a case. Thus if you have any type of legal action that you had not had time to try to dig out the paperwork and talk to a solicitor, now is the time to do it. Simply send us first a brief history of the problem and we will advise if it is worth sending us the paperwork scanned and emailed, for us to study.