ROMANIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Cosmin Vasile and Alina Tugearu, Zamfirescu Racoți Vasile & Partners Attorneys At Law
• maintain the ruling issued by the first court if the appeal is annulled on procedural grounds (lack of payment of stamp fee, filing the appeal with- out observing the deadline, etc) or rejected as ungrounded; or • annul or modify, totally or partially, the ruling issued by the first court (even by amending the reasoning of the ruling) if the appeal is admitted. If the appeal is admitted, the appeal court will rehear the case on the merits or, under certain circumstanc- es, may return the case to the first court for rehearing. As far as the powers of a court adjudicating a higher appeal are concerned, as a general rule, that court might annul the higher appeal on procedural grounds, reject it as ungrounded or admit it. However, if the higher appeal is admitted, depending on the court adjudicating the higher appeal, the case may be reheard on the merits by the same court or sent to the appeal/the first court. 11. Costs 11.1 Responsibility for Paying the Costs of Litigation In the initial phase of the litigation, each party is responsible for its own costs. The plaintiff is required to pay a stamp fee when filing a claim. When admitting an expert report, the court will also establish which party is going to pay the corresponding expert’s fee. Once an award has been issued, the losing party may be ordered, at the prevailing party’s request, to reimburse all or part of the prevailing party’s costs, including attorneys’ fees. The court has the power to order the losing party to cover several types of costs incurred by the winning party, including the stamp fee, the expert’s fee and lawyers’ fees. The amount of the costs to be paid by the losing party might be chal- lenged by both parties by means of an appeal. 11.2 Factors Considered When Awarding Costs The court has the ability to limit the amount of the pre- vailing party’s attorneys’ fees by taking into consid- eration the difficulty of the litigation, the actual amount
of work required from the attorneys and other similar elements. If a claim is only partly admitted, the court may order the costs to be shared (ie, each party will cover their own costs). 11.3 Interest Awarded on Costs Under Romanian law, interest on costs is not awarded. 12. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) 12.1 Views of ADR Within the Country ADR in the form of arbitration and mediation has not traditionally been commonly used in Romania but has gained popularity in recent years. The most used ADR process is conciliation, which is usually organised by the parties themselves or by the assisting attorneys. In the past couple of years, mediation has been intensely lobbied for but has still has not been used in a signifi- cant share of disputes. Adjudication is also used, generally in disputes arising from International Federation of Consulting Engineers contracts. Arbitration is more frequently used when one of the parties is based outside Romania and/or when one or both parties are acting in a professional capacity. 12.2 ADR Within the Legal System As a rule, the Romanian legal system does not really promote ADR. However, there is a general obligation on a judge to urge parties to try to settle their dispute amicably. Since August 2014, following Constitutional Court Decision No 266/2014, mediation is no longer com- pulsory before submitting a claim to court. There are certain cases in which the law provides for a preliminary procedure. For example, in administrative law, the provisions require the fulfilment of a prelimi- nary procedure taking the form of a preliminary request addressed to the institution refusing the claimed right, or the institution superior to the one refusing the right or the form of conciliation, when the claims derive from an administrative contract. In such a case, the
965 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook