Judicial costs and fees in Saudi Arabia: A new era

This regulation aims to enhance the Saudi judicial system’s efficiency, achieve prompt justice, and contribute to fulfilling rights before reaching the judiciary, where people are encouraged to refer to alternative dispute resolution methods.

In today’s article, we will discuss one of the most important updates of the judicial system in the Kingdom: The project of the Judicial Costs Law.

Quite simply, this regulation aims to clarify the mechanism for collecting specific judicial costs when filing lawsuits. Perhaps the most important objective is to reduce the number of malicious lawsuits the judicial system is currently suffering from, especially those using free litigation as a means of threat or intimidation without aspiring to achieve justice. Moreover, this regulation aims to enhance the Saudi judicial system’s efficiency, achieve prompt justice, and contribute to fulfilling rights before reaching the judiciary, where people are encouraged to refer to alternative dispute resolution methods.

Judicial costs shall apply to requests for appeal, cassation, petition for reconsideration, incidental petitions, joinders and requests for response. The regulation defines the cases that are excluded from the application of the judicial costs, which are the general criminal lawsuit and all requests related to it, lawsuits and requests related to the enforcement of law, lawsuits within the jurisdiction of personal status courts, lawsuits and requests within the jurisdiction of the Board of Grievances, and all requests related to them.

The mechanism shared by the Ministry of Justice clarified the imposition of judicial costs on lawsuits at an amount not exceeding 5 percent of the value of the claim, and a maximum of SR1 million ($266,644). No amount more than SR10,000 will be imposed as judicial costs on requests submitted if needed in each case.

Furthermore, judicial costs apply not only when filing a lawsuit, but even when the parties or those who have an interest would like to obtain or look at the files and documents presented in the cases, as well as all the requests to obtain a certified copy of the lawsuit papers or records, whether paper or electronic, for a sum of money not exceeding SR1,000. The Judicial Costs Law will specify the standards, controls and rules regulating such payments.

With regard to the judicial costs that will be paid by the litigation beneficiaries, the fees will be deposited in the Saudi Central Bank to be spent on the development of judicial facilities and the improvement of its services.

The idea of accepting this type of costs may not be easy for some people, but I believe as a person who previously ran between the corridors of the courts that they will greatly improve the case flow mechanism, will improve the services provided, and will greatly speed up the litigation procedures that currently take a long time due to the amount of lawsuits submitted every day.

• Dimah Talal Alsharif is a Saudi legal consultant, head of the health law department at the law firm of Majed Garoub and a member of the International Association of Lawyers. Twitter: @dimah_alsharif