Section 10: Force majeure: filing at court of domicile
Statutory text (Thai original)
ถ้าไม่อาจดำเนินกระบวนพิจารณาในศาลชั้นต้นที่มีเขตศาลเหนือคดีนั้นได้โดยเหตุสุดวิสัย คู่ความฝ่ายที่เสียหายหรืออาจเสียหายเพราะการนั้นจะยื่นคำขอฝ่ายเดียวโดยทำเป็นคำร้องต่อศาลชั้นต้น ซึ่งตนมีภูมิลำเนาหรืออยู่ในเขตศาลในขณะนั้นก็ได้ และให้ศาลนั้นมีอำนาจทำคำสั่งอย่างใดอย่างหนึ่งตามที่เห็นสมควร เพื่อประโยชน์แห่งความยุติธรรม
English translation
If it is impossible, by reason of force majeure, to conduct proceedings in the Court of First Instance having jurisdiction over the case, the party who is prejudiced or may be prejudiced thereby may submit an ex parte application, made in the form of a motion, to the Court of First Instance in whose jurisdiction that party is then domiciled or present; and that court shall have the power to make any order it thinks fit, in the interest of justice.
This English translation is provided for reference only and has not yet been firm-verified. Always rely on the Thai original.
Firm annotation
Section 10 sits in Chapter 1 on the jurisdiction of the courts and provides a narrow safety valve. The general rule is that a matter must be dealt with by the court having territorial jurisdiction over the case; this section allows a prejudiced party, when force majeure prevents that, to file an ex parte motion at the Court of First Instance of the party's current domicile or presence. The receiving court is not deciding the merits: it makes an interim order in the interest of justice, typically to preserve a right or a deadline. The threshold is strict, because the obstacle must genuinely amount to force majeure, not mere inconvenience or a party's own oversight.
Why this matters in practice
This provision matters most when a filing or appeal deadline is about to lapse and you physically cannot reach the correct court in time. What counts as force majeure is decided strictly, so document the obstacle carefully and act at once at the nearest Court of First Instance. Because the motion is urgent and one-sided, getting the framing right the first time is critical; if you are facing a hard deadline in a Thai court, it is worth taking early advice from a Thai lawyer.
Supreme Court decisions interpreting this section
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 1374/2546 (2003)
Where a party cannot reach the competent court in time and files at another provincial court, a judge's order to accept the filing and forward it urgently to the competent court is treated as an acceptance under Section 10 that the party could not proceed by reason of force majeure.
The plaintiff could not get back to the Udon Thani court in time and asked to file at the Khon Kaen court. The Khon Kaen judge ordered the filing accepted and forwarded to Udon Thani for urgent consideration. The court held this amounted to accepting, under Section 10, that the plaintiff could not proceed at the competent court because of force majeure, and that Khon Kaen had thereby accepted the complaint; later transmission to Udon Thani was an internal court step not affecting the party.
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 1643/2545 (2002)
A party who cannot reach the competent court because of an unavoidable obstacle may file the necessary motion, such as a request to postpone the hearing, at the Court of First Instance where the party then is, and it is for that court to rule on the motion under Section 10.
The plaintiff's lawyer, whose vehicle broke down far from any repair shop, went to the Fang Provincial Court to file a motion to postpone the case. The court held that this was a situation in which the plaintiff could not proceed at the court with jurisdiction by reason of force majeure, so the motion could be filed at the Fang court under Section 10, and it was that court's power to decide whether to grant it.
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 5581/2550 (2007)
Not every difficulty is force majeure under Section 10. A claim asking for permission to file an appeal with the Civil Court was held not to constitute force majeure, and the motion relying on Section 10 was dismissed.
The trial court held that the ground asserted, a request for permission to file an appeal with the Civil Court, was not force majeure under Section 10, and dismissed the motion. The decision illustrates that Section 10 is confined to genuine, unavoidable obstacles and does not cover ordinary procedural requests.
Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.
Cited in 21 Supreme Court decisions (1951 to 2008)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 3796/2551 (2008)
- Decision 1374/2546 (2003)
- Decision 1643/2545 (2002)
- Decision 7443/2544 (2001)
- Decision 5720/2544 (2001)
- Decision 6881/2542 (1999)
- Decision 5004/2540 (1997)
- Decision 7258/2539 (1996)
This list is selected automatically, weighted towards judgments that turn on this section rather than ones that merely recite it when passing sentence. It has not yet been reviewed by the firm.
Most often cited alongside
Sections that appear in the same judgments as this one most often. The figure is the number of decisions.
Counted across the firm's corpus of 83,652 Supreme Court decisions, 1921 to 2026. The count is complete; the stated year range trims rare outliers so it describes where the citations actually sit. These figures are computed by us and are not official court statistics. How we count these, and what we measured
Frequently asked questions
What counts as force majeure under Section 10?
It must be a genuinely unavoidable event, beyond the party's control, that makes it impossible to act at the court with jurisdiction. Ordinary inconvenience, poor planning, or a party's own mistake does not qualify.
Which court do I go to under Section 10?
The Court of First Instance where you are domiciled or physically present at that moment. You file an ex parte motion there, and that court may make any order it thinks fit in the interest of justice.
Does Section 10 let the local court decide my whole case?
No. The court acting under Section 10 makes an urgent order to protect the interest of justice, such as preserving a deadline. The case itself still belongs to the court with jurisdiction.
Related guides on ThaiLawOnline
Cite this section
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Plain citation
Civil Procedure Code, s. 10 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Civil Procedure Code (Thailand), s. 10. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-procedure-code/section-10/ (accessed 11 August 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.วิ.พ. มาตรา 10 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-procedure-code/section-10/ -
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<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-procedure-code/section-10/"><p>If it is impossible, by reason of force majeure, to conduct proceedings in the Court of First Instance having jurisdiction over the case, the party who is prejudiced or may be prejudiced thereby may submit an ex parte application, made in the form of a…</p><footer>Civil Procedure Code, s. 10 (Thailand) — <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-procedure-code/section-10/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.