Overburdened Swiss courts – That’s why the outstanding cases in Swiss courts are piling up – News


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There are thousands of pending cases in Swiss courts. The reasons for this are diverse. Solutions are discussed.

There are currently more than 3,000 outstanding cases in the Federal Supreme Court. At the twelve Zurich district courts, almost 10,000 cases could not be closed last year. People have to wait longer and longer for a verdict, says Sabina Motta from the Zurich High Court.

“In divorce proceedings, the parties wait 13 percent longer than before for a verdict. In criminal proceedings, the person may have to wait up to 60 percent longer for a verdict than before.” This is very uncomfortable for the person concerned, says Motta, “because nobody likes to be in the dark about whether they will be found guilty or not.”

Legend:

Criminal proceedings that used to take six months to complete can now take more than a year.

Keystone/Georgios Kefalas

In order to get more judge positions from the Zurich cantonal parliament, the higher court has compiled figures and data from the lower courts. It wanted to know as precisely as possible why the pending mountains are getting higher and higher.

More people, more complicated cases

The most important finding: The population in the canton of Zurich has grown by more than 10 percent in the last 10 years. That automatically means more divorces, more criminal proceedings. However, the number of judges remained the same during this period.

However, not only are there more procedures than there were 10 years ago, these procedures have also become more complicated. A comparatively simple divorce hearing lasted half an hour 5 years ago, today it takes twice as long in court.

Among other things, because the laws today require much more precise calculations of who has to pay how much maintenance for the children, explains Sabina Motta. “We have decisions where we have to predict and calculate eight or nine different phases of life.”

This applies, for example, to daycare, primary school age, upper school and apprenticeships. “It’s very complex and means you have an awful lot of work to do. And it’s not always easy for the parties to understand either.”

Switzerland-wide problem

What leads to high pending cases in the Zurich courts also means more work for the other courts in the country. Daniel Ketterer confirms this. He is a legal researcher at the University of Bern and advises courts on organizational issues. «The reasons for the overloading of the courts are common in Swiss courts. It all sounded very familiar to me. Not because I’ve read it before. But because I encountered exactly the same problems in my analyses.”

The reasons for the overburdening of the courts are common in Swiss courts.

But does it help if the courts simply increase the staff? “Yes,” says Daniel Kettiger. In order to reduce the high pending mountains in the long term, however, you have to start at two levels. On the one hand, more staff are needed to be able to process the ongoing cases.

“The other thing is that additional personnel are assigned to the court for a limited period of time to reduce the pending mountain. And that’s how you usually get this overload of courts under control again. »

Once the outstanding items have been resolved, the courts should be able to do their work again thanks to the additional positions. So that people don’t have to wait any longer for a verdict.

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