The summary on the issue of the binding force of a court judgment in a civil case, or res judicata, consists of two parts: a review of rulings of the Latvian Senate and relevant comments of legal scholars made in the context of these rulings.

The summary covers the issue of the legal force of the judgment, starting with the promulgation of the resolution, the scope of ruling's entry into force and its binding effect on litigants and their successors, it also pertains to the process of correcting typing errors, as well as the enforcement of foreign judgments.

The first part (a summary of case-law) includes excerpts and findings from 123 rulings arranged in the order of the norms of the Civil Procedure Regulation, supplementing the case-law collected by Senator F. Konradi and District Court Judge A. Valters and published in the 1932 and 1938 editions of the Civil Procedure (Regulation) Law with other rulings, including those of 1939 and 1940.

The second part (commentary) contains selected opinions of legal scholars on the legal force of the judgment, its binding effect on litigants and related persons, as well as findings on the origin of the concept of res judicata and the analysis of issues arising from it.

There are excerpts from the works of K. Mališevs, M. Planiols, D. Grims, V. Bukovskis, K. Čakste, whose doctrine is the basis of the case-law of the Latvian Senate or, accordingly, was influenced by it.

Many of these materials are available electronically on the webpages of Latvian National Digital Library[1], the Supreme Court[2] and other websites.

The article on the force of res judicata published in 1848 by V. Marcadé, a lawyer at the French Court of Cassation, translated into Latvian specifically for this collection should be highlighted. It was published in Russia in 1861, and findings contained in it influenced the creation of the Civil Procedure Regulation of 1864, which is evidenced by both the case-law of that time and references to this case-law in the Civil Procedure textbooks of one of the members of the working group on the Regulation, K. Mališevs, and his student V. Bukovskis.

For the convenience of summary users, a transcript of the abbreviations used, as well as a translation of some foreign words, the provisions of the Civil Law and Civil Procedure (Regulation) Law, as well as an index of keywords are provided at the beginning. The word spacing in the excerpts of rulings corresponds to their underlining in the original text, the rendering of which is slightly closer to the requirements of the modern language.

The material was compiled by Zinaida Indrūna, the consultant to the Division of Case-law and Research of the Supreme Court in matters of law application.

 

Information prepared by the Division of Case-law and Research of the Supreme Court
More information: Division of Communication, tel.: +371 67020396, e-mail: iveta.jaudzema@at.gov.lv

 

 

[1] https://periodika.lndb.lv/

[2] https://www.at.gov.lv/lv/tiesu-prakse/vesturiska-judikatura-lidz-1940gadam/senata-civila-kasacijas-departamenta-spriedumi, https://www.at.gov.lv/lv/tiesu-prakse/vesturiska-judikatura-lidz-1940gadam/latvijas-valsts-vestures-arhiva-materiali