ROMANIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Cosmin Vasile and Alina Tugearu, Zamfirescu Racoți Vasile & Partners Attorneys At Law
Parties may also invoke legal set-off for the first time at the appeal stage. The second appeal is considered an extraor- dinary means of challenging a judgment. The grounds of the second appeal need to fall within certain categories of grounds expressly stipulat- ed by the law, which generally concern the legal aspects of the ruling and not the factual side. New forms of evidence may not be proposed by parties before the second appeal court, except for new documents, which need to be submitted attached to either the second appeal request or the statement of defence. 10.5 Court-Imposed Conditions on Granting an Appeal Once the general conditions for filing an appeal are met and the appeal is granted, the court can- not impose any conditions on, or pursuant to, such granting. 10.6 Powers of the Appellate Court After an Appeal Hearing After hearing an appeal, the court may: • 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 without 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 circumstances, 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 admit- ted, 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 challenged 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 prevailing party’s attorneys’ fees by taking into consideration 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
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