Environment Description

Lawsuit Start

A new lawsuit must be created at each action moved by an employee, former employee, group or union (in cases of collective actions).

The process begins when the company receives the \"Summons\" or \"Notification of Previous Settlement Council\". See procedures related to receiving of summons or notification in Labor Lawsuit Flow or Previous Settlement Flow topics, respectively.

Physical Places

The system controls the process even before it becomes a lawsuit, following negotiations with the union; however, when the process becomes judicial, in the summons for lawsuit voucher recognition, the first hearing is defined, with date, hour and venue. Thus, it is recommended to previously create in the system: circuits, judicial district/forum and district court. See the definition of circuit, judicial district and forum in Glossary topic.

A circuit can be associated to one or more judicial districts, even though a judicial district belongs to only one circuit. Jurisdictions are associated to a circuit and they are located inside a forum.

In the jurisdictions file, the address data of the forum where the jurisdiction is located must be informed. In case of municipalities with no jurisdictions, the judicial district forum address is considered.

Pleadings

Pleadings are requests made by the plaintiffs and can be associated to payroll budgets. These budgets can be queried through system reports.

Pleadings must be created and associated to the lawsuit and the plaintiffs should be associated to the pleadings, who must be in People File.

If the nature of the pleading is related to conditions equalization, the pleading must be associated to the paradigm, who needs to be an employee of the company.

When a lawsuit is registered, the defendant company can analyze the plaintiffs pleadings and register the prognosis; by doing that, it is not necessary to re-analyze the case at every query.

A lawsuit can refer to more than one defendant company. When this occurs, a distinction is made: one of them will be the main defendant and the others will be co-defendants.

Considering a labor lawsuit, if the company is the co-defendant, the main defendant is a supplier. This way, in the lawsuit file, the fields Type of Defendant, Code and Supplier Store must be filled out to make this distinction correctly.

When the company is the co-defendant, the fields Type of Defendant must contain the option Co-Defendant and fields Code and Supplier Store must be filled out with the main defendant code and store.

Witnesses

The witnesses do not have their own file, so they must be in the People File, classified as TST - Witnesses and be linked to the hearing. Regardless of witnesses testimony in favor of the company or the plaintiff, they must be included in this sole register. Thus, the field Part of this file must be informed for each hearing to differentiate the witnesses.

Lawyers

The lawyers file is basically the association between person file code and OAB (Brazilian Bar Association) registry.

The creation of a law firms file to affiliate lawyers is optional, because the lawyer is associated to the process by the code of people file.

If the company decides to create the law firms file, the office code must be associated to the lawyer in the process, because the lawyer can provide his services to more than one law firm.

Each process can have more than one lawyer, but only one will be the sponsor of the cause in the hearing. This way, the lawyer and the law firm codes are associated to the hearing.

Judges

The judges file does not associate them to specific jurisdictions, because the system allows the same judge to work in more than one jurisdiction and/or instance. The judge must be associated to possible occurrences related to the lawsuit. Each hearing must be associated to a lawyer.

Occurrences

The system also controls publication dates in reference to the process in progress, making the access to information easier. The control of these dates is performed in Occurrences Register. Some occurrences have deadlines that must be reached.

You can check the occurrence progress through the appeal court e-mail, which must be saved in a Lawsuit File field.

Hearings

The participants of a hearing are:

The company representative can be a partner, the president or an employee (active, included in the company's employee file), by means of a letter of appointment of agent.

The parties cannot attend the hearing without their respective lawyers. More than one lawyer can represent the same party, so the judge must be informed about which lawyer is the sole sponsor of the lawsuit.

The hearing file is associated to the lawsuit and although there are only two formal hearings in Labor Court, you can define other types of extra-official hearings in types file, such as meetings of attempt of settlement. These extra-official meetings, also known as hearings, can be called by the judge responsible for the process and sometimes define many points of the process.

Thus, it is possible to check how many hearings were conducted for a certain process, keeping a history for queries that can be useful to define strategies. However, the dates cannot be repeated for all hearings, so there will be only one hearing per date for a same process.

In the hearings file, the type of representative indicated by the company must be registered: 1 - Employee, 2 - Partner or 3 - President, not being mandatory his pre-existence in the employees file, once the registration can be made at the definition moment.

The witnesses are also associated to the hearing and must be in the People File. If the nominated witnesses do not attend the scheduled hearing, it will be postponed and they can be subpoenaed to attend in another date defined by the judge.

In the pretrial hearing, the company presents the defense. In this hearing, a deal can be settled. In this case, the lawsuit goes to the phase of payment of the amount agreed (a deal usually causes a payment). Otherwise, the judge can determine the plaintiff to present a \"reply\" of the defense rendered. The default time is ten days. In this hearing, the date for trial hearing is defined.

In the trial hearing, the witnesses present themselves, as well as the evidences from both parties. If necessary, the judge requests an expert evidence and schedules the date for the report presentation. This report is registered in protocol by the expert responsible in the forum where the lawsuit is prosecuted without the presence of other parties.

In the case of the single hearing, no other hearing is scheduled and all phases are performed in only one hearing: the defendant presents his defense, the plaintiff presents his reply and, if necessary, the judge also requests the expert evidence and concedes a time for the report presentation before the hearing conclusion.

Either in single hearings or trial hearings the judge can request the witnesses to present briefs or closing arguments, with a summary of everything that happened since the beginning of the hearing, which must be attached to the process.

In the case of single hearing, the judge can request the verbal closing arguments during the hearing itself. When the judge chooses to concede time, the default is ten days. These briefs/closing arguments are registered in the occurrences table.

The court judges the cause and renders the judgment that is published after that. The injured party can request a Motion for Resettlement, asking a review and clearing up any previous fault. This motion returns the process to the judge that will review the judgment. The motions are also registered in the occurrences table.

Appeals

After the judgment review, or even if there is not a motion, the party who lost the cause can render an Ordinary Appeal, presenting the appellee's briefs. In the cases of partial gain, the judge can concede to the favored party a period to also render an appeal, which is called Cross Appeal.

In this case, the judge analyses all the context together with the registered appellee's briefs and sends the process to the 2nd instance, Regional Labor Court.

Each Regional Labor Court includes several judicial districts. The process in 2nd instance can receive a new numeration, without losing the reference of the original numeration in 1st instance.

Then, the lawsuit is distributed to a reporting judge and is submitted to a new judgment. The reporting judge renders a new decision.

If the losing party does not agree with the judge's decision in 2nd instance and considers that the reporting judge is violating the law, he/she can render a review appeal and appeal to Superior Labor Court (TST). In this case, the process can still receive a new numeration.

In TST, the process is judged based on all registered documentation and the judge renders and orders to publish the final judgment.

As a last appeal, the party that feels injured by the TST decision can render a motion, so the process will be analyzed by SDI - Individual Settlements Subsection of TST. There, the judge's decision can be ratified or given back with restrictions, so a new judgment can be rendered.

When the process is registered, the instance information is not necessarily required; thus, you can follow-up the process from the previous settlement council until its conclusion. If a deal was not made by the council and the process is distributed, a new registration is not necessary, since it is enough to complete the information related to the 1st instance.

If the lawsuit is forwarded to 2nd instance or to Superior Labor Court, the new numbers of the process must be informed in the right fields, not changing the initial key that identifies the process in the system.

When the process is concluded, regardless of the phase in which the legal prosecution closing was defined (initial/deal, 1st or 2nd instance, TST), if the defendant is convicted to pay some value, the process goes to award liquidation. The new restated value of the court decision is calculated, which must be approved or refuted by the parties. In case of no agreement, the judge indicates an expert to elaborate the calculation.

The appeals file is fed for management and it is part of the process follow-up reports.

Conclusion

The defendant must program the payments and the values are processed to the Payroll environment, so a supplementary rescission payroll can be elaborated.

If the convicted defendant claims to be unable to pay, the lawsuit goes to the phase of judgment execution and gets a new numeration. The breach of bank confidentiality is provided, as well as the company and/or partners equity components indication as payment guarantee. If the company is co-defendant and the main defendant is not able to pay the judgment, the judge can convict the co-defendant to subsidize part of the amount. This information must be in the judgment file.

In phase of execution, if the company cannot prove the lack of financial resources, the judge can determine the payment in 24 hours. On the other hand, if the company proves it, the process of levy execution upon goods that were in collateral is established and the assets are taken for auction. In this point, the process must be forwarded to equity control for necessary measures.

When the defendant gains the cause or the debt in reference to judgment is liquidated, the process must be forwarded for filing.

Expenses

The system provides a file to control the lawsuit expenses, so it can be followed up. In this file, the attorney fees can be informed, according to the company. The system allows the generation of a bill, informing beneficiary, value and date. This bill is identified in the Financials environment by the APT prefix.

Although this practice is not usual, besides the expenses, the system envisages the payments to plaintiff or deposited in court during the process, which can be deducted in the amount of the judgment. However, you must pay attention to the taxes payable in this cases.

Phases

The system also controls the phases of the lawsuit, which are informed by the user, and not automatically fed with information. This file is useful for queries and statistical reports. The access is possible through lawsuits screen and occurrences entry.

Lawsuit Ending

At the moment of lawsuit filing, the date and place of filing (folder, file, etc) must be informed to make the access easier.

In the Process Monitoring (Occurrence) register, deadline entry fields must remain available. This follow-up agenda must foresee the attachment and protocol of documents to the process folder in the forum, treated as an occurrence.

See the Operating Flow topic for further information.