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Have the judges in charge of commercial affairs at the Casablanca Court of First Instance slowed down with their debt recovery cases? Less than a week after Yabiladi unveiled the practices, which had thousands of debt recovery cases judged en bloc at the first hearing, unbeknownst to many individuals, companies and associations, the judges behind it seem to have slowed the pace.
Indeed, on March 9, four days after Yabiladi’s first revelations, no hearing was recorded under the same conditions. As a matter of fact, three courtrooms among those dealing with commercial affairs reviewed about ten to sixty files each. The majority of these cases were handled by Judge Karima Hamdoune and most of them have been postponed, adjourned or rescheduled for different purposes.
Judge Aziz Arsaoui has dealt with the largest number of recovery cases since 2017 up to date. However, on March 11, he only processed 155 cases, including 20 that resulted in a judgment. Hence, a dramatic decrease in judgments pronounced during the first hearing.
These significant figures, however, remain lower than the 1,876 cases that the same judge handled on November 13, 2019 - his «record» number that year. As for this year, on January 29 only, Aziz Arsaoui handled 1,152 recovery cases including nearly 500 judgments at once. In total, between the beginning of January 2020 and today, March 11, he handled no less than 3,540 files.
Industrialization of justice
For her part, Amina Ridouane, who was the second judge ranked in terms of number of files handled in 2019, did not process any file during March. Since the start of 2020, the judge has worked «only» on 469 cases ... but in one day only, namely February 13.
Judge Ilham El Barhoumi handled 2,317 files between January and March 2020 : on January 27, she worked on 841; 996 more cases on February 3 and 480 cases on February 10.
This system of industrialization of justice set up at the Casablanca court has enabled several companies to have their debtors convicted in record time (1 week after the filing in court in some cases). When a court is «privatized», it is always at the expense of the majority.
Not to mention that all these irregularities represent a violation of several laws. First, the principle of fair trial, recognized in article 120 of the Constitution; then article 111 of law n ° 31.08 enacting consumer protection measures; but also article 39 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which specifies the rules for convening a hearing, the writing of which is signed by the authority or the agent and not by the clerk.
