Serving the procedural documents according to the Code of Civil Procedure

  • 2011-11-09
  • By Donata Pundinaitė, Associate Lawyer

ECOVIS Miškinis, Kvainauskas ir partneriai advokatų kontora

On October 1, 2011, the new Code of Civil Procedure came into force. There were many important changes made for business. One of the changes is related with the serving of the procedural documents. It was pointed out that until October 1, 2011, procedural documents for a legal entity were presented properly if they were presented to the head of the enterprise or governing body, or to an office worker. There were many problems with this serving because the mentioned persons often abused, or did not accept, documents. Due to this reason it was pointed out in the new edition of the Code that the serving of the procedural documents was proper when the documents were presented to the head of the enterprise or to the other persons of the governing bodies named on the Register of the legal entity, or to the representative of the legal entity on the court or to the office worker.

If procedural documents are not presented to the mentioned persons, or the legal entity was not found by the address named on the Register of the legal entities, the procedural documents can be sent for the legal entity to the address named on the Register of Legal Entities. Ten days after this sending the documents are considered “presented properly.”
The serving of the documents by public publication was also changed. Previously, the documents were published in the local newspaper, or the newspaper of the Republic of Lithuania. It is pointed out in the new edition of the Code that documents are presented by publishing these documents on a special Web site.

The new edition of the Code also asserts that the court is able to inflict a fine of 1,000 litas if a person abuses and avoids taking the documents.