Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH —Saudi commercial courts issued 2,020 judgments in the past month, up 150 percent over the same month last year, according to a monthly report issued by the Ministry of Justice.

The number of rulings ranged from 44 and 190 per day. Final judgments accounted for 96 percent of the rulings, while 4 percent were procedural ones.

The ministry said 83 percent of the rulings were issued by the courts in three regions: Riyadh, Makkah and the Eastern Region. Out of the final rulings, 89 percent were on the merits of cases.

A series of recent decisions by the ministry have contributed to the swiftness and quality of commercial court rulings. They include a decision by Justice Minister Waleed Al-Sama’ani to add an article to the implementing regulations of the Civil Procedure Law for setting the adjudication date of a commercial case within 20 days from its date of registration, as well as limiting the number of hearings for a commercial case to three.

“The decisions also include enabling online filing of the case statement, where the data is verified by court clerks and registered within a single day, in addition to notifying defendants on their Absher-registered phone numbers,” the ministry said.

The ministry has also enabled online filing of first defense brief; increased the numbers of judges and panels; assigned a single judge to any case whose financial claim is less than SR300,000; and enabled online filing of appeal applications without having to appear in person at courts.