Limited review in Supreme Court proceedings
The Supreme Court assesses civil cases differently from lower courts. As a rule, it does not reassess the facts of the case, hence there is generally no scope to submit evidence or to call witnesses in cassation proceedings. The Supreme Court does, however, review whether the lower court based its judgment on the correct legal rule, applied that rule correctly, provided adequate grounds for its judgment and took into account all the relevant arguments advanced by the parties.
Binding nature of cassation complaints
When reviewing civil cases, the Supreme Court is bound by the complaints raised by the appellant in cassation. This means that the Supreme Court cannot review the lower court’s judgment beyond the scope of the complaints made. The position is different in tax cases and criminal cases.
Three forms of review
A lower court’s judgment may feature three different types of ruling. The Supreme Court reviews each of these in a different way.
- Findings of law: rulings on the interpretation and application of written and unwritten law. The Supreme Court conducts a ‘full’ review of findings of law, meaning that it assesses whether the rulings in question are correct. By way of exception, if the lower court ruled on foreign law, the Supreme Court will not assess whether the foreign law was correctly interpreted and applied.
- Findings of fact: these concern the establishment of the facts relevant to the dispute, as well as determinations relating to evidence and the interpretation of procedural documents. Examples include findings that a particular event (such as a car running a red light) occurred, that a fact has been proven, or that the matter in question was (or was not) relied upon in a procedural document. The Supreme Court conducts a limited review of findings of fact. This means that it does not check whether the findings in question are correct. In other words, it will not assess whether a car did in fact run a red light, or whether, in its view, evidence was provided, or whether, in its view, this was relied upon. Instead, it merely examines whether the Court of Appeal’s rulings on these points were substantiated with sufficiently comprehensible reasons in light of the parties’ arguments.
- Mixed rulings: these are rulings that have the characteristics of both a finding of law and a finding of fact. They typically arise where decisions require an open-ended legal standard to be applied to the facts of a case. An example would be a finding that an employee acted with wilful recklessness. For this type of ruling, the Supreme Court conducts a full review of whether the lower court based its judgment on the correct legal standard, but conducts only a limited review of how the lower court applied that standard to the facts of the case.
Possible outcomes of an appeal before the Supreme Court
If the Supreme Court finds that none of the complaints against the lower court’s judgment are well-founded, it will dismiss the appeal. That concludes the matter, and the contested judgment then becomes final. If, on the other hand, it sets aside the lower court’s judgment, it has two options: to dispose of the case itself, or to refer the case back to another lower court for further examination and a decision. If it disposes of the case itself, that is the end of the matter. In practice, however, the Supreme Court will usually refer the case back to a lower court, because once a judgment has been set aside, one or more factual issues will often need to be re-examined or determined. Following referral, the lower court must, in its further handling of the case, comply with the Supreme Court’s judgment.
The Supreme Court can dismiss an appeal without giving reasons if the decision is not relevant to the uniform application of the law or development of the law (Article 81 of the Judiciary (Organisation) Act (Wet op de rechterlijke organisatie)). In addition, the Supreme Court can declare any unmeritorious appeals that are bound to fail inadmissible, without giving further reasons, shortly after submission of the appeal in question (Article 80a of the Judiciary (Organisation) Act). This occurs regularly in tax and criminal cases, but only rarely in civil cases.
