Contract disputes need speeding up

Provided by 7DAYS.ae
The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry is calling for reforms to speed up the resolution of commercial contract disputes.A recent report from the World Bank Group has found that Dubai ranks 144th in a study of 178 economies worldwide for the resolution of business disputes over commercial contracts.From the study, Dubai Chamber compared the performance of the emirate to that of Singapore, and found that Dubai’s court actions on contract enforcement took around five times as long to reach resolution and cost one and a half times more. “These indicators of enforcing a commercial contract point to the fact there is a real need for reforming and speeding up the process of settling business disputes through the judicial system in Dubai,” the chamber said.The proposed reforms, which have yet to be decided, aim to reduce the time taken from 607 to 200 days and reduce the costs by 31 per cent.Chris Mills, a partner at Clyde and Co international law firm who has practised in Dubai, the UK and Hong Kong, told 7DAYS that it was “not unusual” for a case to take two years from start to finish in any country.However, the difference with Dubai courts was a lack of early settlement options.“It’s very rare here, once a court case has started, to not reach judgment, whereas in other regions, conclusions often come before the judgment,” he said.Mills also pointed to the fact that a winning party in a Dubai case does not recover full legal fees from the opposing party, giving a weak party no financial incentive to settle.
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[Source: Business News]