On Multiple Litigation

In the practice of civil litigation,the involved parties,who hold onto a strong desire to win the lawsuit or to destroy the other party,often deliberately or blindly file repetitive or reactive litigations aroused from the same facts in different courts,which has led to the inefficiency of the judicial system.To rectify this abnormal situation,improvements need to be made from both the litigant side and the court system itself.In this paper,the research begins with the conception and outcome of filing of a civil litigation,and then the standards that should be considered when determining if the second litigation is a repeated or reactive one.Finally,it comes to the policies that can be applied for the prevention of multiple litigations.This paper has inspected repeated litigation in different countries and regions for the purpose of comparative studies.Cases are analyzed to demonstrate the complex of different situations in judicial practice as well.In the end,it comes to the conclusion that several feasible improvements can be made to deal with multiple litigations.Apart from the Introduction and Conclusion,this paper contains four chapters.In the first chapter,the basics of repeated litigation is introduced.First of all,the concept of the filing of a civil litigation and the consequences of it.Among which,the most significant outcome of the trial of a case is that a second trial should not be opened again if all the disputes are aroused from the same set of facts.Then it is of extreme importance that the relationships between Res Judicata,Non Bis in Idem,and Multiple Litigations must be clearly built.In the writer's opinion,Non Bis in Idem is a legal principle descended from ancient Rome that prevents the opening of a second trial when a dispute has already been argued in a court before.Therefore,Non Bis in Idem not only prohibits litigants to file another case when their dispute has been settled in a court before(Res Judicata),but also prevents parties to file a case in another court during the hearing of the present one(Non Bis in Idem).The second chapter contains an overall description of doctrines and practices concerning multiple litigations in both case law and civil law family.On top of that,the writer analyzed the reasons that caused the differentiated methods of preventing multiple litigations in those two legal families and the illuminations it have shown to Chinese civil procedure legal system.The third chapter is focused on the elements that should be considered when deciding whether the second case should be regarded as a repeated litigation and thus should be prevented.If the second case has the identical litigants,the same subject matter or has a claim that had been aroused in the same facts but due to the negligence of the party,he/she failed to do so,then the second claim should not been allowed for another trail under the same jurisdiction.The last chapter mainly discusses the strategies and policies can be adopted for the prevention of multiple litigations.First of all,the court should take advantage of the information technology for it enables the court to track down if there has been a trail on process before starting a brand new one.Then for all types of multiple litigations,on the one hand,judges' obligation of interpretation must be stressed when parties intent to file another case,so that it would facilitate the resolution of disputes between parties.On the other hand,parties must be responsible for every action they take in a court,which simply means,if they filed the second case for dishonest reasons,they shall be punished as well.At the end of this chapter,it points out some measures particularly for certain types of multiple litigations should be taken to rectify multiple litigations.