Despre decăderea din dreptul de a invoca motive, apărări şi excepţii noi în căile de atac
On the forfeiture of the right to raise new grounds, defenses and exceptions in appeals

Summary/Abstract: Forfeiture constitutes one of the main instruments used by the legislator to ensure procedural discipline and the overall coherence of civil proceedings. There is no doubt that this sanction, analyzed in reference works to which we refer, has broad applications throughout all matters governed by the Code, including within proceedings before the court of first instance. However, given the overriding importance of this issue in appeals seeking reformation, we shall analyze this problem in the present study, after briefly outlining the rules applicable at first instance. Furthermore, when we speak about the importance of forfeiture time limits in appeals, we refer, in the context of this study, to the time limits applicable to the parties’ submissions and defenses, whether substantive or procedural, within the meaning of Art. 31 of the Code of Civil Procedure (the latter being, in general, procedural objections or other similar incidents through which the application of rules of civil procedure is sought). We therefore have in view those allegations of the parties known in German civil procedure as Parteivorbringen, that is, the litigated matter introduced by the parties into the proceedings. As we have explained in detail on a previous occasion, the expansion of the litigated matter at both levels of trial courts is severely limited in German civil procedure; however, there exists (including on appeal) a general safeguard allowing the admissibility of certain defenses even at the appellate stage where serious grounds justify this. By contrast, Romanian civil procedure follows the Latin model, which permits the development of the litigated matter also before the appellate court, even though strict forfeiture time limits exist at first instance; these, however, produce effects only before that court, as results from our procedural tradition, confirmed, moreover, by the binding case law of the High Court of Cassation and Justice.

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