The Cyprus Bar Association expresses its surprise at the content of today's announcement of the Supreme Court in relation to the Delayed Cases (Special) Procedural Rules 2022.
In a statement, the IDA said while requesting and seeking a meeting with the Supreme Court, for the issues of the backlog, i.e. the backlog of cases and gave its letter and the necessary clarifications and even requested that Mr. Nathaniel, so far has not received any positive response from the Supreme Court.
It also says that the Supreme Court was not present, nor were any of the Supreme Court judges, at a prior meeting with the President, Vice President and Executive Director of the IDA, to note that it "therefore cannot know the facts".
According to the Bar Association "the facts are that Mr. Nathaniel, as the manager of the backlog, former President of the Supreme Court, requested a meeting, which was held at the offices of the IDC on 7 November 2022, and after spending most of the time referring to the statistics of the 2014-2018 cases, he explained to us that he would make a recommendation to the Supreme Court to establish a procedural framework for the adjudication of these cases."
"He explained to us that the Court of First Instance would send out notices and those who did not respond within 10 days the cases would be dismissed with no right of re-opening. We then explained to him that this was contrary to Article 6 of the European Convention," the IDA continues.
It also states that Mr. Nathaniel explained to them that it would not be right to allow interim applications thereafter and that appeals would not be allowed, to note that they explained to him that interim applications cannot be prohibited because facts may arise that justify applications and that appeals cannot be prohibited because according to the law they are allowed under certain conditions.
According to the IDA, "he also recommended hearing without witnesses in some cases, and we told him that this is problematic because it was applied to small claims and it did not work."
In addition, he notes that "no reference at all was made to the application of Order 37 of the Dyson Rules which we saw afterwards", adding that "because the discussion was very general, on the same day, the President of the IDA requested, inter alia, that we be given a copy of a draft when it was ready".
"Immediately but clearly this request, in a reply letter from Mr. Nathaniel, which followed several days later and when he informed us that the regulations had been approved without our seeing them, was not accepted," he says."
The IDA stresses that it "neither saw nor knew and much less approved these regulations.
It also points out that "the Irish experts never suggested that the problems would be solved by regulating procedural institutions", to add that "on the contrary, they recommended a package of measures which have yet to be implemented and in fact what is happening is a cherry picking of certain recommendations, which the Irish recommended to avoid by saying that either the package of their recommendations should be adopted or nothing at all".
"On these matters," it adds, "we note that the Supreme Court notice does not recommend anything else."
On the issue of the appointment of retired lawyers, the IDA says it has made numerous recommendations for a comprehensive settlement of the issue of arrears and we stand by them.
"But instead of these, we suddenly see a procedural institution that we did not agree to and a piecemeal attempt to shift the problems to lawyers and their principals," it says.
Finally, he notes that he remains firm in his positions and hopes that the issue of delays will not continue to be dealt with in this piecemeal manner but in the overall interest of justice and the rule of law.
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