Case Differentiation in the Hungarian Civil Procedure
Case Differentiation in the Hungarian Civil Procedure

Summary/Abstract: Preventing undue delay is one of the most common aims of civil procedural reforms. In several European countries some form of simplified procedure has been introduced to handle their mass of simpler cases. There are also countries where a special procedure exists for complex cases. In recent years the Hungarian civil procedure has been amended several times and a trichotomous system has been introduced. In this paper, I would like to examine the English civil procedure after the Woolf reform and compare it to its Hungarian counterpart. After the Woolf reform, English civil procedure also has a trichotomous system too, where three tracks exist in the first instance procedure. I examine why these civil procedures differentiate between cases. In my opinion, civil cases can differ a great deal by subject matter or complexity. The main question is: is there any correlation between complexity, length of procedure and undue delay? From the view of substantive law the answer is quite obvious: if a case is more complicated, more time is needed to decide it, and so the correlation is directly proportionate. However, what if we look at this not only from a substantial aspect, but from a procedural one? Is it so obvious that less complex cases require less time or not? In a system where parties and their legal representatives have the same procedural instruments in every case, the answer is rather uncertain. I will compare these systems to attempt to find answers to these questions.

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