Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — Commercial courts in the Kingdom provide 12 e-services, reflecting positively on clients and saving them time and effort. The e-services include making inquiries on cases, viewing judgments, notifications, filing of statement of claim, appeals, filing of first defense brief, serving notice to defendant, and information on cases and hearing dates; among others.

The Saudi commercial judiciary has issued about 32,000 rulings in the past 10 months. Several decisions by the ministry have contributed to the quality of commercial rulings, including setting the adjudication date of a commercial case within 20 days from its date of registration, and limiting the total number of hearings to only three.

“The decisions also include enabling clients to file statements of claim online, then the data is verified by court clerks and registered within a single day, as well as notifying defendants on their Absher-registered phone numbers,” the ministry said.

The ministry has also enabled online filing of first defense briefs and appeals; increased the numbers of judges and panels; and assigned a single judge to any cases whose financial claim is less than SR300,000.