Litigation

Litigation is core business for Fellinger Corporate Law. The expertise ranges from debt collections and injuction procedures to shareholders conflicts to elaborate proceedings. Fellinger Corporate Law uses litigation as a part of your strategy to solve your problems, including filing petitions for attachtments or  bankruptcy.

Some facts to know about litigation in The Netherlands:

To litigate before the district court in first instance, some costs are being made for third parties according to standard tariffs. The bailiff will charge about EUR 85 for a summons, the district court will levy court fees at a rate of 2.2 % of any principal amount from EUR 11,345, with a maximum of EUR 4,784. If you are summoned you will incur the same amounts, when you are a natural person (as opposed to e.g. a limited liability company) you will incur a maximum of EUR 1,148.

In case you win the procedure, the opposing party must pay the court costs. This comprises the court fees, bailiff costs, however note that you legal fees from your attorney will only be covered acording to a system of points. The latter is depending on the principal amount and the legal work done. Given a standard debt collection for a principal amount of EUR 50,000 with only a summons, a rebuttal and a post defence hearing, the compensation awarded to the winner will be around EUR 1,800. It is clear that this will not cover all the costs. In case some out of court settlement negotiations have taken place, it is possible to recover some of these costs as well, again against a system of points. Only in cases in which these costs have been extensive and wel documented, these out of court debt collection costs may integrally be awarded.

The length of the procedure is only predictable to a degree, partly because of possible legal and procedural complexities (e.g. hearing of witnesses, or a rapport to be made by a court appointed expert) but also due to the time the court may require to render a verdict.

As parties have basically six weeks to hand in their briefs and petions, it may take the court a month or three to hold a post defense hearing. The time the court needs to render a decision after all the work is done by parties, is at the moment on the average one year. In all, one must expect to wait one and a half year between summons and verdict.