Personal Observations on the Shortcomings of the Judicial System

I would like to share my observations on our courts, based on my own experience.

The judicial system is the most important element of the institutional environment shaping the investment climate. Curiously, the development of the judiciary is mentioned in almost every strategic document, yet my subjective experience suggests that nothing has so far changed for the better.

I will start, perhaps, with the most striking fact: court hearings here are still held over WhatsApp. I am certainly in favor of digital solutions in the judicial system, but using a messenger that is not designed for video conferencing at all as the main platform for court proceedings is, to put it mildly, highly questionable. Incidentally, Zoom, for instance, allows you to record a session, and AI can transcribe it and produce brief summaries of the discussion, at a much higher quality. How do judges make decisions when over WhatsApp one often cannot even hear what is being said, given that our internet is far from the best?

So much money is spent on digitalization, and yet we still conduct court hearings over WhatsApp. I understand that during the pandemic it could be accepted as force majeure, but the pandemic ended three years ago, and we are still using a messenger, while you cannot even get through to a ministry by phone. I wonder whether hearings with government agencies are also held over WhatsApp.

Judges often do not prepare for hearings at all and learn most of the information at the hearing itself. Perhaps this is due to court workloads, perhaps to a reluctance to study the materials; I do not know. But in my cases, judges simply had not read the materials and sorted things out on the spot. Given the quality of the WhatsApp connection and the volume of information presented, the quality of conclusions reached in such hearings leaves much to be desired.

In one case, proceedings were dragged out to the point where there was no longer any sense in continuing, because the contract was about to expire, and in the end we withdrew our claims. The case was not a simple one, and the judge most likely chose not to rule.

In the case of ongoing relationships, claims can be filed repeatedly. Yet, curiously, a judge issued a ruling considerably worse than the previous court's decision and described it as a partial satisfaction of the claim. In other words, this was a situation in which dismissing the claim outright would have been more favorable to the plaintiff. I do not even know how such a thing is possible.

At hearings, judges often show sympathy for one party or the other, and in principle it is possible to tell what ruling the judge will make before the hearing has even ended.

Judges like to moralize, and it is not entirely clear why.

A court-appointed expert's report may say black, and the judge will still say it is white, because the other party may perceive black as white, and that this is its constitutional right. When I heard this, especially on appeal, my hair stood on end.

As experts, the court brings in inexperienced staff of public organizations on an unpaid basis and bases its conclusions on their opinions, while a proposal to hire a professional is considered inappropriate.

Most remarkably, judges do not verify the information they cite in their rulings. One judge simply referred to information (a court decision that does not exist) that had never existed, and the appellate court simply repeated the same thing. It seemed that the appellate court does not study the documents at all and accepts what the first-instance court wrote, or copies from the other party's response or claim, since the reasoning section contains nothing new.

There are many such observations, and they simply give you the right to believe that our courts are not the most objective and that, in their practice, they do not examine cases thoroughly.

Whatever decision a court makes, what matters is how you perceive the court itself, whether you can trust it, and whether you can understand how well founded its decision is.

With the development of AI, if judges learn to use it, studying case materials will be much easier for them. With the help of AI, it seems to me, one could also check how consistently our judges rule in similar cases. I wonder whether the Supreme Court ever analyzes the quality of the decisions made afterwards. With today's digital capabilities this is not a difficult task at all, and it could easily identify who makes wrong decisions; such judges should be dismissed and new ones recruited.