The requirement of motivation in the written opposition.
Among the new features Law 42/2015 of October 5, amending Law 1/2000 of January 7, on Civil Procedure (hereinafter LEC), we will focus on the modification of Article 815 of the same, in the context of summary proceedings, where, among other issues, the written objection to the initial request for summary proceedings.
Since the entry into force of the LEC, in said article and in the event that the debtor intended to oppose the payment request made, the following was provided:
1. If the documents submitted with the petition are those provided for in paragraph 2 of Article 812 or constitute prima facie evidence of the petitioner's right, confirmed by the statements made therein, the court clerk shall require the debtor to pay the petitioner within twenty days, providing proof of payment to the court, or to appear before the court and briefly state, in a written objection, the reasons why, in their opinion, they do not owe, in whole or in part, the amount claimed. Otherwise, the clerk shall report to the judge so that they may decide on the admissibility of the initial petition..
In short, if the debtor intended to oppose the plaintiff's request, with a succinct statement of his reasons, he already complied with what was required.
This minimum requirement (which is explained by the simplified and agile nature that the summary judgment was intended to provide) in practice became the widespread use of the mere denial of the existence of debt, under laconic formulas such as "no amount is owed" or the even more devoid of arguments "I object", omitting any allusion to the reasons that would support the opposing refusal and even less the provision of any documentation that could prove that position.
Since the filing of a written objection entails the automatic dismissal of the summary proceedings and, depending on the amount of the claim, its conversion into a summary trial, this practice could place the creditor in a defenseless position, having to attend the hearing of the summary trial without knowing any of the reasons why the debtor considered the debt pursued to be nonexistent and, in turn, allowed the debtor to reserve a list of arguments to be revealed for the first time at that moment.
This problem immediately attracted the attention of the courts, who on some occasions, faced with merely formal objections, required the debtor to explain and specify the arguments on which he based his refusal of the petition filed, although this position was not unanimous and, on occasion, required that it was the creditor himself who had to make the judge see the need to demand the provision of certain information relating to the reasons for opposition.
As we have noted, the new wording of Article 815 of the Spanish Civil Procedure Law (LEC) , which has been in force since October 7, 2015, has put an end to the practices that had developed, replacing the expression "allege succinctly" with "allege in a well-founded and reasoned manner." Consequently, the statement of opposition must be a well-founded document in which the supporting arguments for the opposition are set forth in a reasoned manner.
Thus, the new wording of article 815 of the LECliterally reads as follows:
1. If the documents submitted with the petition are those provided for in paragraph 2 of Article 812 or constitute prima facie evidence of the petitioner's right, confirmed by the statements made therein, the court clerk shall require the debtor to pay the petitioner within twenty days, providing proof of payment to the court, or to appear before the court and submit a reasoned and substantiatedstatement of opposition explaining why, in their opinion, they do not owe all or part of the amount claimed. Otherwise, the clerk shall report to the judge so that they may decide on the admissibility of the initial petition.
We understand that the new wording definitively closes the door to the possibility of using formulas denying the existence of the debt in the opposition document that are merely formal, not endowed with material content, making the opposition document substantially equivalent to any response to the claim.
Andreu Pujol Camps
Commercial Area
Àmbit Assesor
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