Lawyers Facing Serious Illness or the Last Month of Pregnancy Could Pause Court Deadlines for 60 Days Under a PSD Bill
Today hearings can be postponed but deadlines keep running. The Bar Association backs the change, which would exclude urgent civil cases and any case with a defendant in custody.
Lawyers in Portugal who are in the last month of pregnancy, have a high-risk pregnancy, are adopting a child or are going through serious illness would be able to put court deadlines on hold for up to 60 days, under a bill the PSD is presenting to parliament, ECO reported on Wednesday. The Bar Association (Ordem dos Advogados) has backed it and is asking every party to vote for it.
What changes
Today, the law lets lawyers ask for a hearing or other court act to be postponed in certain situations, but the procedural deadlines keep running. A lawyer in hospital or who has just given birth can still miss the date for an appeal or a written defence. The PSD wants to change that by allowing both the postponement of court acts and the suspension of procedural deadlines, so that protection comes from the law rather than from the goodwill of a particular judge.
Under the draft, a lawyer could ask for essential deadlines to be suspended, or court acts postponed, for up to 60 consecutive days in these cases:
- the last month of pregnancy, and adoption;
- a high-risk pregnancy;
- serious illness involving surgery, treatment or a hospital stay.
In criminal cases the suspension would apply to essential procedural deadlines; in civil cases the proceedings themselves would be suspended. Pregnancy loss would get its own rule, allowing court acts to be postponed for three consecutive days. The bill also says expressly that the rules apply in the administrative and tax courts.
The limits
The suspension would not be automatic or unlimited. It would depend on the nature and urgency of each case, to protect the speed of justice and the rights of the other parties. In criminal cases it could not be used where a defendant is in pre-trial detention or under house arrest, or where the delay could cause serious or irreparable harm, which must be justified. In other urgent criminal cases the suspension would be capped at 30 days, and urgent civil cases would be excluded altogether.
Who supports it
"This protection should make it possible to postpone hearings and suspend procedural deadlines in situations of vulnerability, such as the last month of pregnancy, surgery or cancer treatment. It should not depend on the judge's 'understanding' but become a legal right," said PSD MP Paulo Lopes Marcelo, one of the bill's signatories.
The Bar Association says it has pressed for the change for several years and met every parliamentary group and the government over the past year. "For years, a lawyer who had just become a mother, or a lawyer in hospital, was asked to keep meeting deadlines as if nothing had happened. That is not professional rigour. It is an injustice," said its president, João Massano. He argues that the gap, which dates from rules set in 2009, also hurts clients, who can be forced to change lawyer when they most need one. The Bar plans to seek meetings with every party represented in parliament.
Why it matters to clients
Most people only meet this problem from the other side: when their own lawyer falls ill in the middle of a divorce, an eviction case or a dispute with an employer. Self-employed lawyers, who often work alone, have no colleague to pick up a file at short notice. If the bill passes, a client whose lawyer is in hospital would no longer face the choice between missing a deadline and hiring someone new. The bill still has to be debated and voted, and could be amended in committee.
