La descongestión en la jurisdicción contencioso administrativa

Abstract

The “Contentious-Administrative” Jurisdiction (which handles matters relating to suits/legal actions under administrative law) is extremely overcrowded. In order to solve this situation, several measures are required:

1. Reducing the caducity terms (the only legal period within which the aggrieved or injured party must bring suit since, upon expiration, there will be no further opportunity to sue) of ordinary litigious actions;

2. Demanding from trial lawyers the submission - in the quality of annexes to the complaint or to the answer to it - of most of the documents that the parties want to assert or enforce in the action, in order to reduce the probationary period or time allowed for producing evidence, and of the proofs submitted;

3. Increasing both the expenses to be defrayed by the plaintiff for the suit to be prosecuted and the taxation of costs (the pecuniary sanction imposed on one of the parties) against the loser in the lawsuit;

4. Transfering to the Ordinary Civil Jurisdiction some of the matters assigned to the Contentious Jurisdiction and, most particularly, executive processes as well as lease-property restitution proceedings, as well as those relating to medical-failure liability;

5. Eliminating those constitutional actions having been poorly designed by the legislator and lacking real effectiveness, such as the “repetition action” or action for recovery (when the public entity sentenced to pay damages sues the public server having caused the sentence), as well as people’s actions for public morality, and group actions;

6. Balancing workloads among the sections of the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca, in order that a certain part of the affairs dealt with at the very congested Second and Third sections (name of the decision divisions within the Court) are conveyed to the rather unburdened First and Fourth sections;

7. Extending the lapsing or prescription (abnormal termination of the proceedings due to the plaintiff’s inactivity) against the claimant public entities when they do not meet their duties to the suit;

8. Suppressing approval by the Administrative Courts of pre-judicial settlements, in order that they are passed at an administrative jurisdiction by the judicial counsel of the Attorney-General’s Office.