Pending cases before the civil courts drop by 11%

Pending cases before the civil courts during 2015 dropped by 11% when compared to 2012, figures provided by the Ministry for Justice reveal.

In figures this means that the civil courts had 10,274 pending cases in 2015 compared to the 11,533 cases in 2012.

The disposition time – which is the ratio of the number of pending cases and the number of resolved cases within a given time – went down to 668 days. This stood at 777 days in 2012.

Up from 99% in 2012, the clearance rate reached 112%.

Addressing a news conference, Justice Minister Owen Bonnici welcomed the improvement in the civil courts as “good news” for both private citizens and businesses.

“We have registered good results across the board which means that private citizens and businesses are seeing a faster resolution of civil and commercial cases,” he said.

Bonnici added that this was an important aspect as an increased clearance rate leads to a better economy and more liquidity.
“With the implementation of changes in civil procedure and the first full year of the court attorneys, we expect better results in 2016,” he said.

It was explained, that the computation method used was in line with European standards, influenced by how institutions such as the World Economic Forum, the European Commission’s Justice Scoreboard and the World Bank use such data to analyse the competitiveness of a country. This is mainly related to commercial litigation.

Carrying 95% of all criminal cases, the Court of Magistrates resolved more cases than the number of incoming cases for the second time in the past three years.

A general overview shows that the criminal courts resolved an equal amount or more cases to the number of incoming cases for the second time in the last three years.

The criminal court of inferior appeals had less satisfactory results, which the minister attributed to the retirement of three judges.