Can a Neighbour be a Recipient of a Procedural Document in the Judicial Practice of the Service of Documents in Civil Cases in the Perspective of the Code of Civil Procedure? Comments for the Law as it Should Stand

Abstract

The action of service of documents, as one of the crucial institutions in the process of communication, is to primarily ensure the procedural subject a genuine possibility for being informed on actions taken during civil proceedings by the court and other participants, thereby allowing the actual participation in the creation of the course of proceedings and affect its outcome. In subjective terms, the relationship on which the service is based is, as a rule, tripartite in nature. This arrangement is composed of the following entities: “the active entity,” “the serving entity” and “the passive entity” – “addressee of the document,” who in cases provided for by special provisions is also substitutable by the “recipient of the document.” Currently, pursuant to Art. 138, para. 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure, if the deliverer does not find the addressee at home, he may serve the court paper to an adult household member, or if there is no such person, to the estate manager, caretaker or village mayor, if these persons are not the addressee’s opponents in the case and have offered to hand over the document to the addressee. A substitute service of a document may be performed only personally to strictly defined third parties, enumerated in the content of the analysed provision, and in an appropriate order. As a proposal for the law as it should stand, despite the lack of appropriate regulation, the author hereof proposes to consider extending the circle of recipients identified in the procedural law to an additional category of entities – a “neighbour” of the addressee. That entity, as another potential document recipient, due to significant attributes (constant contact with the addressee resulting from keeping neighbourly relations, primarily during the actual use of the apartment, especially during rest) could, through his participation in the delivery in civil matters, guarantee the assumed effectiveness in respect of the action of handing over the document.