This week we have achieved a small victory. We are representatives of a client on a case, heard in Stara Zagora District Court. We have asked the judge to send by email copies of the latest hearing minutes. The judge refused, grounding her decision with “the court doesn’t have that practice”. We’ll that was not quite true. Art. 42 para 4 of the Civil Proceedings Code allows the court to send notices and subpoenas by email. We claimed that the court can use that to send copies of court documents too.

We have lodged an application to the Chairperson of Stara Zagora District Court, requesting the Chairman to “create such practice”. The court Chairperson accepted our arguments and ordered the judge to apply directly the aforesaid article. Yesterday we have received the requested documents by email.

I’m writing about this since that a major breakthrough in how the Bulgarian court operates. As I’ve said before, one of the major reasons of why lawsuits  take so long to be tried is the notice/subpoena problem. Electronic means solve this problem, but the the judges are reluctant to use them. There’s no explanation why.