20. Termenul de invocare a prescripţiei extinctive a dreptului material la acţiune, o excepţie veritabilă de la regulile de drept comun sau doar o normă edictată defectuos?
20. The time limit for invoking the extinctive timebar of the substantive right of action – a genuine exception to the rules of common law or merely a defectively drafted provision?

Summary/Abstract: The case gives rise to an analysis of the time limit whereby the extinctive timebar of the substantive right of action may be invoked, in relation to the provisions of Article 2,513 of the Civil Code and to the general rules on filing a statement of defence and raising private law pleas provided for by the Code of Civil Procedure. Starting from a recent court decision, the article examines whether the aforementioned text lays down a genuine derogation from the common procedural law or whether it is, rather, the expression of a regulation that is insufficiently correlated with the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure. Both the interpretation that allows the timebar to be invoked up to the first hearing, regardless of the lateness of the statement of defence, and the interpretation according to which this cut off point applies only in cases where a statement of defence is not mandatory are examined. The proposed conclusion is that the difficulty stems not so much from an error of interpretation as from the ambiguous drafting of the text, which requires legislative intervention for clarification.

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