• on 28 November 2018, the President of the Russian Federation signed Federal Law No. 451-FZ “On Amendment of Specific Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation”. The foregoing law is unofficially referred to as the “Procedure Revolution Law”, because it introduces large-scale and material changes to the three procedure codes: the Civil Procedure Code, the Arbitrazh Procedure Code and the Administrative Procedure Code;
  • the foregoing law becomes effective on the time when general jurisdiction courts of appeals and cassation courts commence their operations. By virtue of the Resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated 12 September 2019 the date when the courts in question are to commence their operations is set. It is 1 October 2019;
  • the law at issue should be considered in conjunction with the conceptual judicial changes covering the system of general jurisdiction courts. Similar to the system of arbitrazh courts, the system of general jurisdiction courts is comprised of institutionally independent units: 5 courts of appeals and 9 cassation courts established on a extraterritorial basis;
  • the concept of revision of appeals in cassation in general jurisdiction courts was changed. From now on cassation proceedings in general jurisdiction courts - similar to cassation revision in arbitrazh courts - are built based on the classical cassation pattern, when a complaint is considered in any case - rather than upon discretion of a court official - if it is in line with the legislative requirements;
  • remote participation in trial of petitions of appeals and cassation is enabled; all federal judges should be equipped with respective video conference systems;
  • another step was taken towards procedural representation under the changes made. In particular, only defense lawyers, people with higher legal education or a degree in law are allowed to represent in courts from now onward. An exception is made to: 1) specific categories of people especially mentioned in the law (organization's managers, insolvency officers, patent attorneys, etc); 2) representatives defending their clients in courts of justice and in district general jurisdiction courts;
  • the law modifies the system of the concepts employed. Specifically, the term “subject matter jurisdiction” was removed from the text and replaced by the term “competence”. However the changes affecting the term do not affect the substance of the concept. In the situation when two branches of judiciary exist, the rules of distribution of cases among them are preserved, while the gap in law that triggered disputes on the subject matter jurisdiction between the courts was eliminated. From now on it is provided that if arbitrazh court finds out that a dispute should be tried by general jurisdiction court, it shall refer the case to the district court of the subject of the Russian Federation that, in turn, shall refer the case based on the subject matter jurisdiction. If a mistake was made when a lawsuit was filed with general jurisdiction court, the case shall be immediately referred to arbitrazh court;
  • procedure for judge's rejection in arbitrazh court was changed. Now this procedure is similar to the one existing in general jurisdiction courts: the judge considers the filed motion seeking his/her rejection himself/herself. On the one hand, this approach represents a materialization of the principle of the procedural economy, on the other hand the reasonableness of the implementation of this approach spawns doubts as to whether the rejections are considered objectively;
  • changes touched upon time for case consideration. The total term for consideration of a case in arbitrazh court was increased from three to six months, while the term of prolongation was increased from six to nine months;
  • the law increases sums for summary proceedings. For legal entities the threshold sum is RUB800,000; for individual entrepreneurs it is RUB400,000. The sum for issuance of a writ is increased from RUB400,000 to RUB500,000.

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