42% of cases arriving at TUI appeals on Civil, Labor matters

41.91% of the 136 cases that were heard at the Court of Final Appeal (TUI) during the judicial year of 2022–23 were cases of appeal on civil and labor matters, according to the annual report of the Courts of Macau.

According to the same report, the second largest share of cases (25%) were cases of appeals on jurisdictional decisions, while the appeals from Penal processes occupied some 22.06%.

These three types account for the large majority of all the cases received by TUI.

In addition to the 136 cases received in the past judicial year, which were all concluded within the year, the same court has also reached a final decision on an additional 77 cases that were continued over from the previous judicial year. In total, TUI has heard 213 cases.

Such statistics contrast the work done by the Court of Second Instance (TSI) in the same year. The majority of TSI’s cases concerned penal (55.61%). Those on civil and labor matters only amounted to 16.99%.

With a slightly more diverse range of cases, TUI also had to handle some litigious appeals, which amounted to 12.34% of the cases addressed by the second court.

This year, partly due to a large number of cases (343) that carried forward from the previous year, TSI heard a total of 1,332 cases.

It was also noted that, for the first time, TSI received three cases which required the court to consider in the first instance; that is, the cases, because of their intrinsic complexities, originated in TSI not as appellate cases sent on from the Court of First Instance (TJB).

From the 989 new cases that entered the court in 2022–23, TSI judges have delivered decisions on 959 of them, reaching a conclusion rate of 96.97%. Still, due to the accumulated cases from previous years, TSI has a good number of cases still pending decision.

Due to its first instance nature, TJB is the court that accumulates the largest among judiciary work. In 2022–23, it received approximately 10,905 new cases and continued 10,054 from the previous year.

Although the court has handed down judgments on some 10,990 cases in the past judicial year, 9,969 cases, almost 50% of the cases it received, have carried over to the 2023–24 year.