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PHILIPSBURG--Independent Member of Parliament (MP) Leona Marlin-Romeo has requested a Parliament meeting to discuss the introduction of a Small Claims Court for the country based on Article 862 of the Code of Civil Procedures. The framework proposal for this court was presented to Parliament by Attorney Reynold Groeneveldt earlier this year.
The Small Claims Court will handle claims up to NAf. 5,000, bring "a substantial financial relief" for residents, said the MP who hopes she will get the support of the other 14 MPs to agree to make the court a reality.
Residents will be able to file claims with the court covering breaches of written and verbal contracts, return of down payments, return of payments for defective merchandise or faulty workmanship, damages to property and personal injury, among other things.
“In every community there are persons who have claims for relatively small amounts of money. These claims remain uncollected or unresolved, mainly because these cases are not brought before the regular court system for various reasons," the MP said on Monday. Some reasons she cited for unresolved claims were the court filing fees and marshal fee involved with filing a regular court case.
"Although, there is no legal requirement that one must be represented by an attorney, the complexity of the regulations related to filing and the procedural guidelines for handling court cases makes it absolutely advisable to contract lawyers to represent parties in court proceeding," she said.
The attorneys’ fee is "another obstacle" for a person who wished to file a claim against someone for an amount of NAf. 1,000.
“In other words, it is too expensive for the claimant to engage an attorney for such a small claim and it is not attractive and economically not feasible for the attorney to accept a case to recover such a small amount of money," said the MP. "For these and other reasons, we believe that it is absolutely necessary and justified to establish a Small Claims Court in order to resolve in an efficient manner such disputes."
