Barely two weeks away, the coming New Year promises some interesting changes in the judiciary with the effectivity of new procedural rules issued by the Sereno Supreme Court.

Although mainly directed at judges and justices of the lower courts as well as to litigation lawyers like this columnist, these procedural rules will definitely shorten court proceedings and bring down the expenses of litigants.

Unanimously approved last September, the Supreme Court (SC)’s Administrative Matter No.
12-8-8-SC (or the so-called “Judicial Affidavit Rule”) requires the submission of “judicial affidavits” in place of the direct testimony of witnesses. This means that when a party (whether plaintiff or defendant) questions his own witness, he no longer needs to place the witness on the ‘witness stand’. Instead, the party or his lawyer merely submits the written sworn statement (i.e. the judicial affidavit) of his witness in a question-and-answer format.

The new rule also requires each party to the case to attach all his documentary evidence to
the judicial affidavit which, in turn, must be submitted at least five days before the “pre-trial” or “preliminary conference” in the case.

By the way, a “pre-trial” or “preliminary conference” is the meeting of all the parties and their respective lawyers conducted by the court before the start of the actual trial or courtroom proceedings in order to clarify points of law and facts regarding the case. This usually happens at the early stages of a suit.

Based on the pilot program implemented by the SC in the Quezon City courts, the “judicial affidavit rule” was said to be effective in reducing the time used for presenting the testimonies of witnesses by about two-thirds. Hopefully, our courts can now finish trials and decide cases much faster.

This new rule addresses the most common complaint of litigants that cases takes too long – reportedly an average period of 6 years—to be finished, not counting the appeals process, which usually takes several more years.

Due to the huge volume of cases filed by Filipinos every year, the limited number of courts and the slow and cumbersome adversarial style of trial procedure, the calendar of many courts especially those in urban centers have become clogged, causing inevitable delays.

With the early submission of judicial affidavits and documentary evidence, the parties will also be forced to “lay their cards on the table” before the start of the trial. This will not only help expose any false or fraudulent claims (by the plaintiff) and defenses (by the defendant), it will also aid the litigants in gauging the strength and weaknesses of their case and hopefully, encourage more amicable settlements.

The SC also recently issued the “Efficient Use of Paper Rule” (A.M. No. 11-9-4-SC) requiring all “court-bound papers”—such pleadings, motions and other similar documents filed in court by litigants—and court-issued documents (i.e. decisions, resolutions, orders, reports and transcripts of stenographic notes) to be printed in single space, with a one-and-a-half space between paragraphs, using a 14-size font on a 13-inch by 8.5-inch bond paper (known as “foolscap” size in Windows). Moreover, all court-bound papers must have a left hand margin of 1.5 inches, an upper margin of 1.2 inches, a right hand margin of 1 inch, a lower margin of 1 inch, and numbered consecutively.

To our knowledge, this is the first time the SC has standardized the format of court-bound papers. This will definitely reduce the length of court-bound papers and do away with the mishmash formats used by different lawyers and law firms.

The new rules also drastically cut down the number of copies that need to be filed in court by litigants. The court-bound papers filed with the Court of Appeals, for instance, have been pared down to three copies (one original and two duplicate copies) from the previous seven.

Since these “court-bound papers” constitute a significant chunk of a litigant’s expense, this new rule should bring down the documentation costs for many parties.

Initiated by former Chief Justice Renato Corona, these new rules are the product of an extensive fine-tuning by the SC’s Committee on the Revision of the Rules of Court, headed by Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, and the Sub-Committee on the Revision of the Rules on Civil Procedure, headed by Associate Justice Robert Abad.

We’ve heard that an indefatigable Justice Abad did the rounds of the legal community to elicit feedback, comments and position papers on the then proposed rules from various law sectors and organizations.

With these new procedural rules, we really hope our countrymen will experience a faster—and less costly—dispensation of justice.