TAIWAN Law and Practice Contributed by: Peng-Kwang Chen, Pamela Huang, Claudia Huang and Ching-Tzu (Katie) Chang, Formosa Transnational Attorneys At Law
4.4 Requirements for Interested Parties to Join a Lawsuit A third party may join a lawsuit if the following requirements are met: • the action is still pending at (any level of) the court; • the purpose for a joinder is to assist one of the parties; and • the third party has a legal interest in the action between two parties. A joinder must file an intervention pleading to the court where the action is then pending. An intervention pleading shall indicate the following matters: • identify the action intervened and its parties; • the legal interests of the joinder in the action; and • request to join the action. The court shall serve the intervention pleading on the parties, and may (but is not required to) consult the parties before deciding whether to permit a third party to intervene. 4.5 Applications for Security for Defendant’s Costs If the plaintiff does not have a domicile, resi- dence, or place of business in Taiwan, the court, upon the defendant’s application, shall order the plaintiff to provide security for litigation costs. However, this does not apply under the following circumstances: • when the plaintiff’s claim includes parts that the defendant does not dispute; • when the plaintiff has sufficient assets in Tai- wan to cover the litigation costs; and • after the defendant has already engaged in oral argument.
4.6 Costs of Interim Applications/ Motions The court fees for interim applications, including petitions for evidence preservation, provisional seizure and provisional injunction are all set at TWD1,000 (about USD31). Further, to compensate the defendants’ damag- es arising from the (wrongly claimed) provisional seizure or provisional injunction procedures, the courts may order the claimant to provide a secu- rity deposit for such petitions. • For the security deposit provided by a claim- ant for provisional seizure, the courts gener- ally set the amount of deposit at one-third of the claimed amount. • In exceptional situations like the division of property of spouses or labour disputes relat- ed to wage claims, to protect the economi- cally disadvantaged individuals, the amount of security deposit must not be higher than one-tenth of the claimed amount. • As for provisional injunction, the security deposit is typically set at the full amount of the subject matter value. 4.7 Application/Motion Timeframe There are no fixed legal deadlines for courts to issue rulings on applications or motions, and Tai- wan law does not provide the parties the right to request an issuance of an application/motion within a set timeframe from the court. How- ever, in family law cases, when the victim is in imminent danger due to domestic violence, the court is required to issue an emergency protec- tion order within four hours to provide immediate protection.
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