Description
Civil practice and procedure in this country is shrouded in some mystique. There is frequent judicial comment that the provisions relating to civil procedure are unnecessarily complicated, often obscure, in an unsatisfactory state, delay justice, raise difficulties which have no substance although costly and pregnant with hardship and render the construction of the legislation something of a nightmare. Sometimes a dozen injustices are perpetrated from misaprehension, inadvertence, ignorance, or deliberate calculation and manipulation of the complicated rules. So complex, difficult and obscure are the rules that there are very highly learned judges who would cheerfully try a man for a serious crime on intricate evidence but who would run a mile before trying the simplest civil case. (Please do not regard this observation as an exercise in a piece of lese majeste). This state of affairs is detrimental to the public interest in general and to the rightful claims of any given litigant as his case is not investigated and determined by the courts with timeous speed, inexpensively with effective and plainly visible justice.
