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The modality of enforcement through garnishment involves the existence of a legal relationship, in which the pursued debtor has the quality of creditor, and the garnishee has the quality of debtor, a legal relationship used by the pursuing creditor in order to realize the claim from the writ of execution. The garnishment knows two phases, the one of establishment and the one of validation, the second one intervening only if the garnishee fails to fulfil its obligations as a result of communicating the address for establishment of garnishment. The application for validation of the garnishment is a veritable application for summons, its finality being to obtain a writ of execution by the executing creditor against the garnishee. The study examines the defences which the garnishee can invoke in the court of validation, having regard to the legislative solution provided by the current Civil Procedure Code, according to which a garnishee is forbidden to file a contestation to the enforcement against the acts establishing the garnishment, the latter being able to use his defences only before the court of validation [Article 787 (5) of the Civil Procedure Code]. Therefore, the processual means of invoking the defences before the court of validation are analyzed, being questioned the admissibility of the garnishee’s filing of a counter claim aiming at the cancellation of the juridical act from which the relationship between him and the debtor arose. The defences of the garnishee are analyzed starting with the distinction between defences on the merits and the processual and procedural ones, in relation to the possibility conferred to the third party to invoke against the creditor all the pleas and defences that he may oppose to the debtor, to the extent that they are prior to the establishment of garnishment [Article 790 (3) of the Civil Procedure Code]. -
The institution of the penal clause, regulated in Articles 1538–1543 of the new Civil Code, still encounters different interpretations, even contradictory sometimes, in the judicial practice and in the solutions of the courts. In particular, the interest of the practitioners and of the specialized doctrine is based on the possibility conferred to the court of law to reduce the penal clause in the two cases provided by the legislator, namely when the main obligation has been executed by the debtor to the benefit of the creditor and when the penalty is clearly excessive in relation to the prejudice which might have been foreseen by the parties on the conclusion of the contract. This study aims to analyse thoroughly the two hypostases in which the judge is allowed to defeat the principle of binding force of the contract and to intervene in the decrease of the quantum of penalties, an analysis materialized both from a theoretical point of view and especially from a practical point of view, offering relevant solutions from the recent judicial practice.
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Presumptions have been playing an important role in the civil trial, their necessity and utility being recognized both in the doctrine and in the judicial practice. Recently, in order to remove any doubt about the quality of means of evidence of the presumptions, the legislator of the Civil Procedure Code enumerates them among the means of evidence and, at the same time, establishes their legal regime, and the legislator of the Civil Code has extended the scope of the legal presumptions. The reason behind these regulations is based precisely on the necessity to find out the truth also in the cases in which the judge does not have available direct evidence. Certainly, as we have stated on another occasion, the presumptions are indirect means of evidence, as the conclusions drawn imply eo ipso the prior proof of a fact that is neighbouring and related to the unknown fact. As we shall further show, the Romanian legislator has understood to classify the presumptions into legal (established by law) and judicial or simple (left to the enlightments and wisdom of the judge), with the mention that, in this study, we shall refer in particular to the legal presumptions.
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Pre-trial detention was defined as the most intrusive custodial preventive measure in the exercise of the person’s right to freedom, by which the judge or the court orders the detention of the defendant for the duration and under the specific conditions provided by law, in places specially intended for this purpose, in the interest of the criminal prosecution, the preliminary chamber procedure or the trial. In order to take pre-trial detention, it is necessary to meet all the general conditions provided by law for taking preventive measures, as well as the existence of at least one of the prev. of Article 223 of the Civil Procedure Code. In practice, in almost all cases, preventive arrest is based on the provisions of Article 223 (2) of the Civil Procedure Code. Under these conditions, we tried to create both a general presentation of these grounds and a theoretical analysis of the main issues that can generate confusion and problems in the application of the cases provided for by Article 223 (1) of the Civil Procedure Code. All this theoretical analysis has, as far as possible, been examined in conjunction with solutions from judicial practice, where appropriate. -
In practical situations with medical implications, the nature of the expertise must be established as a matter of priority. This matter involves a series of discussions on the differences between forensic expertise and specialized medical expertise. Nowadays, forensic expertise continues to be approached from an obsolete perspective, without detecting its limits in medical or legal matters. Highlighting the differences between the two categories of expertise and the shortcomings of the relevant legislation has major practical consequences. The utility of this study lies in terms of analyzing the legal significance of respecting the medical specialty and the object of the medical expertise – a new category of expertise, which seems to be of no practical use, despite its great importance. This respects the principle of medical specialty and takes into account also the level of development of medical science in the field of expertise. Adherence to incidental medical guidelines or protocols can be verified only by a specialized medical expertise, the only one able to analyze the compliance of the medical conduct. Instead, the limits of forensic expertise are revealed by its object, which is just another expertise in medical law, without encompassing the entire medical or legal matter, in a single specialty. The two types of work must be clearly delimited in judicial practice, for the full clarification of legal situations with medical implications, regardless of their nature. -
Globalization, the changing concepts of the family definition and the emergence of new medical techniques for conceiving children have led to the emergence of substitution maternity and the issue of inheritance rights for children born of such a procedure. At international level, no comparable moral or legal basis can be identified in this area. The creation of a common legal framework or the advancement of a large-scale international unification of substantive law or rules on the recognition of the effects of foreign laws seems to be a distant goal to achieve. The issue of the inheritance rights of children born of surrogacy motherhood is a very complex one and currently without legislative protection. On European Union level, European Regulation 650/2012 has been in force since 2012, but there are no provisions on the situation of inheritance rights deriving from a surrogacy contract. The study aims to analyse the general concepts recognised in international, European and national law with regard to the creation of a legal framework as structured as possible for the protection of the inheritance rights of children born of substitution maternity, and to understand how this medical practice works. Another objective will be to analyse the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the national courts decisions, in order to find solutions on how to protect inheritance rights in such a situation. -
The premise of this study is that the current legislation uses two legal notions with relatively different names, that is the „legitimate interest” in the administrative contentious procedure, regulated by the Law No 554/2004, and the „interest to act”, used in the Civil Procedure Code, both representing conditions of admissibility of the judicial action (in administrative contentious and, respectively, civil action). The aim pursued by the author was to observe whether these legal notions are synonyms or they differ, in terms of their processual connotation, depending on the nature of the legal action promoted. In this regard, the author has compared the two legal notions, revealing the similarities and differences between them, and, at the end of the study, he has set out the theoretical and practical arguments for the purpose of recognizing their processual autonomy. -
Proportionality of the enforcement measures constitutes, in essence, a fundamental principle of the civil enforcement procedure, which, although it does not have a regulation in terminis recognized in the Civil Procedure Code, already knows, at regulatory level, the valences of a principle, following only to be assimilated by the doctrine, by the practice and, consequently, by the legislator. Although it could be argued that proportionality is subsumed to the general principle of the right to a fair trial, we consider that it claims its own individuality at the level of the fundamental thesis leading the enforcement process, as compared to the specificity of the measures involved, the fairness of the procedure following to be appreciated by reference to the level at which all the other principles are observed, being a corollary thereof. The procedural guarantees which they enjoy, the remedies and the legally recognized consequences are elements that turn, therefore, the proportionality of the enforcement measures into a basic principle of the enforcement, on which a fair procedure is built, thus giving full expression to the valorisation of the rights and fundamental freedoms of the individual. -
The article addresses the newly introduced legal institution of verification of the legality and lawfulness of protective measures during the criminal trial, which institutes the obligation of the criminal judicial body to periodically analyze whether the legal and factual grounds on which it was previously taken or maintained continue to exist, following to be ordered its maintenance, cancellation, extension or limitation. Through the novelty of the subject under analysis, the study will contribute to the outlining of the guidelines of judicial practice in this unique legal matter. -
Adopted in the 1922–1926 legislature, the Constitution of 1923 was indispensable for the project of legislative unification of Romania. Its norms impose unique fundamental principles and rules for the entire national legal system: the principle of national sovereignty; the principle of legality and supremacy of the Constitution; the interests of the social community may take precedence over individual interests in the matter of property right. The regulation of some unique institutions for the entire Romanian State ensures the unitary exercise of constitutional competences, and the regulated rights for all Romanians ensure a unique foundation of freedom and equality. Other provisions have a strong unifying role and each provide a point of constitutional support for future legislation. The supremacy of the constitutional norms in the system of legal norms, supported by the case law of the unique supreme court, but also the beneficial psychological effect determined by the constitutional unification complete the picture of the impact of the constitutional norms from 1923.
