JAPAN Law and Practice Contributed by: Hiroki Wakabayashi, Kenichi Sadaka and Kei Akagawa, Anderson Mori & Tomotsune
litigation as an adverse party (Article 47 of the CCP). • By filing a written petition with the court, a third party may intervene in the litigation as a co-plaintiff/defendant if the subject matter of the litigation is to be determined for one of the original parties and a third party only as a unified matter (Article 52 of the CCP). 4.5 Applications for Security for Defendant’s Costs If the plaintiff is not a resident of Japan or oth- er countries that are signatories to the Hague Convention on Civil Procedure, the defendants may apply for an order to provide security for the court costs, which include court filing fees, fees for court-appointed professionals, and very limited costs of the defendants, excluding attor- ney’s fee (Article 75 of the CCP). Separate from the above, in a case where interim relief is granted, the court normally requires the applicant to make a security deposit for potential damage due to that interim relief (Article 14 of the CPRA). 4.6 Costs of Interim Applications/ Motions Interim applications or motions are typically addressed within the same proceedings as the substantive issues. In most cases, court fees are either not required or are fixed at a modest amount specifically stipulated for each applica- tion, making such fees relatively inexpensive. If fees are applicable, they, along with other court costs (excluding costs for provisional remedies, which are separately assigned, and attorney’s fees, which are wholly borne by the party that retained them), are generally assigned to the los- ing party or, in a case where the plaintiff’s claim is partially approved, allocated proportionally
to the respective parties when the judgment is issued. 4.7 Application/Motion Timeframe If a party requests urgent interim relief, the court may deal with the application/motion within a timeframe corresponding to the urgency of such relief. In any case, the court will deal with such an application/motion on a case-by-case basis. If the issue is not urgent, the court may choose to resolve it as part of its decision on the merits. The CPP provides limited scope for document production. A litigant must file a petition with the court, clarifying the indication, the purport, the holder of and the facts to be proven by the docu- ments sought, as well as the grounds for the obligation to submit the documents (Article 221 of the CCP). Deposition (taking of witness tes- timony in advance of the evidentiary hearing) is not available in ordinary circumstances. Having said that, if the court finds that there are extraor- dinary circumstances under which it would be difficult to examine the witness at the evidentiary hearing, it may examine the witness in advance (Article 234 of the CCP). 5.2 Discovery and Third Parties 5. Discovery 5.1 Discovery and Civil Cases A litigant can file a petition for document pro- duction against a third party. Where the court intends to order a third party to submit a docu- ment, it will hear the third party prior to the ruling (Article 223(2) of the CCP). 5.3 Discovery in This Jurisdiction The scope of discovery is very limited, in that the CCP does not provide for deposition per se and
695 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook