WEBINAR 1- CIVIL AND COMMERCIAL SUITS on 10th July

Addressed by Mr. Nitin Prasad (Partner- King and Partridge, Bangalore)

About the Webinar :

This webinar started with Nitin Sir giving us a brief introduction about civil suits and its
importance. As law students he said, it was important for us to understand the gap between what
is taught in law schools and the actual practice in Courts in relation to civil and commercial suits.
According to the Commercial Courts Act, 2015 all civil suits could go only to the civil courts but
after the amendment all suits that come under the definition of 2(c) of the act could be filed
under commercial courts as well. After the amendment in 2018, agreements made privately by
the parties would not be enforceable, but under commercial courts this could be done which
involved a court fee and was considered as a cheap litigation process. He further mentioned
certain similarities and differences with respect to the provisions of Civil Procedure Court and
Commercial courts and stated the requirements to file a commercial suit. He also spoke about the
advantages of arbitration and how it was preferable in today’s world and 2018 amendment also
brought mandatory mediation, as the means of dispute resolution are considered to be faster,
more systematic and less chaotic compared to the normal courts and more companies should
resort to it. The speaker highlighted the amended Order 13 A of the Code of Civil Procedure
where disputes of commercial nature could be disposed of under the commercial courts act
without having to go through a full-fledged trial procedure, he briefly mentioned about summary
courts under Order 37 of the Code and said these gave the courts a lot of power. In the end he
mentioned what an advocate should look into while joining a firm and should be major areas that
a young advocate should focus on. The session ended with a question and answer round where
the attendees showed their enthusiasm in the subject and asked details about the subject.

My views :

I believe as law students is it essential to have a basic understanding of the functioning of the
Courts and court procedures. I was fortunate enough to attend this webinar as now it has given
me a very clear understanding and will definitely help me in my further internships. I was not
very well aware of certain facts mentioned by the speaker and did not have immense knowledge
on this subject. This webinar gave an overview of the whole concept of civil and commercial
courts and suits. Some of important things that I learnt in this webinar were, Firstly, various
amendments that were made with respect to filing of suits in the commercial courts, the role of
the parties, the enforceability of the suits and the steps to file a commercial suit. Secondly, the
significance of arbitration was really stressed upon and its features were very well discussed with
an aim to help companies resort to these means of dispute solving. Third and the most important
thing was amendments related to written arguments, the history and the erroneous procedure of
handling the arguments put forth by the parties which led to concept of written arguments its
advantages and rules were highlighted. Various questions were put forward to the speaker related
to jurisdiction of High Courts, the on-going practice of arbitration, digitization of courts etc.
which made the session more interesting. As a law practitioner he gave his take on what the
future law aspirants should focus on while choosing their line of work and gave points on how
we can make our fundamentals and foundations strong to be able to manage the hurdles that
might possibility arise while dealing with future cases. Lastly, I would say it was an extremely
helpful and illuminating session for me and has certainly opened up new spheres of
understanding the subject.