1
2
8C
le
Increases in these jurisdiction limits were
recommended in December 1986 by. Mr. Peter Robinson in his Report on the Hong Kong Judiciary. He took the view that some civil work is being done at too high a level. This, he said, resulted in an inefficient use of human resources, high litigation costs for claims that were not, in today's terms very large and
He also consequent discouragement of some potential plaintiffs. thought that the District Court was underloaded with civil work and could relieve the High Court of some of its burden. He accordingly recommended that the District Court's general jurisdiction should be raised to $250,000.
Consultations on this recommendation have revealed, however, that an immediate increase to that level would not be advisable. It would bring into the District Court a class of litigation involving quite sizeable sums of money for which its rules of procedure do not at present provide adequate interlocutory procedures.
in this Bill
1/is,
The proposal is, therefore, that for the time being the District Court's general civil jurisdiction should be increased only to $120,000 that is to say double the previous figure and that the jurisdiction in relation to land be increased to $100,000. Meanwhile, work will be set in hand to make the necessary improvements to the District Court's rules of
And procedure. Once
Once that has been done, the question of increasing the general civil jurisdiction to $250,000 will be looked at
again.
As regards the Small Claims Tribunal's jurisdiction, the Government accepts that the burden on persons litigating or contemplating litigation for sums between $8,000 and $15,000 can
be lightened by increasing the jurisdiction of the Small Claims
that figure Sc Tribunal to $15,000 This implements Robinson's recommendation
on this point.
/...3
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.