Kirk Ben­gochea

A civ­il claim is a law­suit which deals with dis­agree­ments among per­sons. Per­sons in­clude com­pa­nies and groups. It in­cludes ac­tions for breach of con­tract, neg­li­gence, tres­pass and per­son­al in­juries. In a civ­il claim a per­son is usu­al­ly seek­ing mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion for the dam­age caused to him or her.

Claims for more than $15,000 must be filed in the High Court while claims for less than $15,000 can be heard be­fore a mag­is­trate. This ar­ti­cle fo­cus­es on claims brought be­fore the High Court. Civ­il ac­tions in the High Court are gov­erned by the Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules (CPR). Mat­ters are usu­al­ly heard by a sin­gle judge.

The per­son bring­ing the claim is called the claimant while the per­son be­ing sued is called the de­fen­dant. Be­fore fil­ing a claim, the claimant's at­tor­ney must write a let­ter to the pro­posed de­fen­dant, briefly set­ting out the facts of the case. This is to al­low the par­ties the chance to save time and mon­ey by ne­go­ti­at­ing and pos­si­bly set­tling the claim with­out go­ing to court. This let­ter is known as a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter.

If there isn't a sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sponse, the claimant may then file the claim. The claim is start­ed by the fil­ing of a claim form. This is a doc­u­ment that briefly sets out the claim and calls on the de­fen­dant to state whether he ad­mits or de­nies the claim. The claim form must be ac­com­pa­nied by a state­ment of case in which the claimant de­tails the facts that en­ti­tles him to the rem­e­dy sought.

The claimant must al­so in­clude and at­tach all the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments that he re­lies on to sup­port the claim. Both the claim form and state­ment of case must be filed at a High Court of­fice and then served to the de­fen­dant. Af­ter the de­fen­dant has been served, he must file his de­fence , usu­al­ly with­in 28 days. The de­fence should state his po­si­tion re­gard­ing the claim and set out ful­ly his ver­sion of the facts.

If no de­fence is filed, the court may en­ter judg­ment for the claimant. This means that the de­fen­dant may be li­able to sat­is­fy the claimant's claim with­out the judge con­sid­er­ing the de­fen­dant's ver­sion of events. Once the claim and de­fence are filed, a date is set for a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence. This is chaired by the judge.

Both par­ties and their at­tor­neys are present and em­pha­sis is placed on a co­op­er­a­tive ef­fort to see if the is­sues sur­round­ing the claim can be re­solved am­i­ca­bly, and if not, the most ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive means to de­cide the case. In to­day's civ­il lit­i­ga­tion sys­tem, em­pha­sis is placed on ne­go­ti­a­tions and at­tempts to re­solve dis­agree­ments as am­i­ca­bly as pos­si­ble with­out the need for a tri­al.

It is hoped that this ap­proach will re­sult in less claims go­ing to tri­al and more re­sources be­ing avail­able for those is­sues which re­quire ju­di­cial de­ci­sions. Where, how­ev­er, ne­go­ti­a­tions and at­tempts at co­op­er­a­tion do not re­solve the claim, ac­cess to jus­tice and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have your dis­agree­ment set­tled by an im­par­tial judge, by bring­ing a civ­il claim, is a fun­da­men­tal hu­man right and forms the bedrock of any de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety.