Article 199défendeur défaillant qui comparaît à temps

Décisions de la Cour suprême interprétant cette section

1. Arrêt de la Cour suprême n° 5222/2567 (2024)

   Under Section 199 paragraph two, a defendant in default of answer who was not permitted to file an answer has no right to adduce his own evidence, so allowing him to present additional evidence, including on appeal under Section 240 (2), is improper.

   The Appeal Court had allowed the defaulting defendant to bring in additional evidence and relied on it. The Supreme Court held this was improper because, under Section 199 paragraph two together with Section 240 (2), a defendant in default of answer who was not permitted to answer may not adduce his own evidence.

2. Arrêt de la Cour suprême n° 4637/2567 (2024)

   Where there is no settlement of issues, section 184 paragraph two requires the court to issue a notice of the day fixed for taking evidence and to serve it on the parties not less than ten days in advance. A defendant who is in default of answer is still a party for that purpose, because section 199 paragraph two leaves him the right to cross examine the plaintiff's witnesses and bars him only from adducing evidence of his own. So the court cannot take evidence and go on to judgment without notifying a defaulting defendant of the hearing date, and proceedings conducted without that notice are improper. The duty to give notice comes from section 184 paragraph two; section 199 paragraph two is what makes the defaulting defendant a person entitled to receive it.

   The trial court took the evidence of the plaintiff and of the seventh defendant and then fixed a date for judgment, without notifying the other defendants of the day set for taking evidence; those defendants had not attended on the day the date was fixed and had been declared in default of answer. The Supreme Court held that this offended section 184 paragraph two, which requires a notice of the evidence date to be served on the parties not less than ten days in advance where there has been no settlement of issues. Being in default of answer did not put those defendants outside that requirement, because under section 199 paragraph two a defendant in default of answer keeps the right to cross examine the plaintiff's witnesses and is only prevented from adducing evidence of his own.

3. Arrêt de la Cour suprême n° 1479/2562 (2019)

   A defaulting defendant who appears but does not inform the court at the first opportunity of an intention to contest does not meet the conditions of Section 199 paragraph one, so the court may refuse the request to file an answer.

   The defendants' counsel had appeared but did not lodge the request at the first opportunity. The trial court held that this failed the conditions of Section 199 paragraph one and dismissed the request, then proceeded to take the plaintiffs' evidence with cross-examination only.

Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.