Document Type : Scientific
Author
Assistant Professor, Department of Law, Faculty of Law and Social Sciences, Payam Noor University, Tehran, Iran. Email: mshokri@pnu.ac.ir
Abstract
Civil claims can generally be divided into financial and non-financial disputes. Financial claims, after adjudication at the first instance, may be subject to objection, appeal, or cassation. The determining criterion for this process is the value of the claim, which serves as the threshold for the appealability or cassation of financial civil judgments. Given the financial nature of such claims, this criterion needs to be adjusted in accordance with economic inflation. The regulations governing this section of proceedings, enacted in 2000 (1379 SH), have remained unchanged. During the past 24 years, however, inflation has significantly reduced the numerical value of money. The research methodology employed in this study is primarily library-based, relying on statutes, scholarly books and articles, and analytical-descriptive reasoning derived from these sources. The failure to align this criterion with inflation not only disregards the legislator’s intent at the time of enactment but also leads to a high volume of appealable financial judgments, resulting in congestion in the judicial system and wastage of time and human resources. Although, albeit belatedly, the Law on the Dispute Resolution Council of 2023 (1402 SH), along with its executive regulations approved in June 2024 (Khordad 1403 SH), increased the financial threshold for appealability, these measures remain insufficient and fail to reflect the current pace of inflation. Consequently, they continue to attract criticism. Furthermore, litigation costs for financial claims, which should be proportionate to the value of the claim, remain based on outdated figures and have not been adjusted to account for inflation. This practice increases the financial burden on litigants and adds to the overall economic costs for citizens. Additionally, in the context of inflation, claims of inability to pay litigation fees (e’esar) should be processed with minimal formalities, relying primarily on official inquiries. These issues highlight the need for legislative reform and adjustment to ensure that financial thresholds for appeals, cassation, and litigation costs are properly aligned with the realities of economic inflation.
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