It is all well for the Court Registries to take this stand, which to me smacks of arrogance because the difficulties faced by the lawyers by this new directive are not considered. The use of Cash and Money Orders in lieu of cheques is a regressive move not to mention fraught with risk.
Generally people do not carry cash for fear of theft and so cheques and credit cards have become hugely popular in line with this sentiment. Therefore to expect filing clerks to carry substantial sums of cash to make payments or to buy money orders in the post office is in my view, ridiculous and a waste of time and also money as there is a commission levied on the money orders purchased. I forsee a time in the future where lawyers may have to carry out the filing personally in a bid to try and overcome such risks!!
If for example, a firm is filing an appeal to the High Court and a Summons and Statement of Claim all on the same day, the filing fees (including the deposit payable) will come up to hundreds. It is not prudent to carry around cash in those quantities. The Court areas and post offices may become a hunting ground for snatch thieves looking for an opportunity.
If the rationale behind this directive is because of cheques by certain firms bouncing for whatever reason, well the simple solution will be to identify those repeat offenders and their code numbers and block their code in the system so no cheque issued by them is accepted. Why should other firms who have conscientiously issued valid cheques be made to suffer the consequence of the actions of an errant few?
No doubt there have been and will be cases where there have been genuine mistakes made, but then there should also be an avenue to explain to the Registrar and appeal for the unblocking of their code numbers after due consideration.
Finally, having delved into some of the alternative options available, I am reminded of Rules that provide that documents will only be used in Court proceedings upon payment of the prescribed fee. Where cheques have bounced, all the Court Registry has to do is reject the documents and strike those documents from the record whilst noting the same on the Court file, in case of a future dispute and notify the firm concerned.
When I was talking to a fellow member of the Bar on this issue, he mooted the idea of the Courts implementing an e-system as some government departments do where each firm is given a e-account which the firm can top up accordingly depending on the filing to be done. This I thought was a brilliant idea as issues such as cheques bouncing will be a thing of the past.
Surely there are better, safer and more progressive alternatives to using cash and money orders which have not been explored!
Submitted by Navit Kaur Randhawa
No comments:
Post a Comment