The Council of State’s challenge chamber ruled in its March 30 ruling that no partiality or bias on the part of the preliminary injunction judge could be inferred from the trial decision to hear by telephone.
What is this case about?
In this case, a hearing at the preliminary injunction court was scheduled for March 24. The applicants felt that they could assume that the scheduled hearing would not take place due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. But the preliminary injunction judge decided that the scheduled hearing would go ahead and that telephone hearing would be used. On March 20, the parties received a letter about this with a detailed explanation of how the telephone hearing is conducted. The applicants challenged the judge in preliminary relief proceedings because it could be inferred from the fact that the hearing went ahead that the judge in preliminary relief proceedings considered the interests of the other party to be more important than their interests. As a result, there would not be a fair trial.
Assessment of the challenge chamber
The challenge chamber finds that the decision of the preliminary injunction judge on telephone hearing is a trial decision. Therefore, the only question at issue is whether the trial decision gives rise to bias on the part of the preliminary injunction judge. The challenge chamber finds that it does not. According to the Challenge Chamber, the interim relief judge acted in line with the working method of the Council of State resulting from the current very exceptional circumstances due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. For this, the challenge chamber refers to the website of the Council of State, which states that urgent cases would be dealt with and that telephone hearings could be used in the process. Moreover, the parties were expressly given the opportunity to submit visual and map material prior to the hearing. No bias can be inferred from the decision of the judge in preliminary relief proceedings to hear the parties by telephone in the sense that the judge in preliminary relief proceedings considered the interests of the opposing party to be more important than the interests of the applicants. The challenge request was therefore denied.
You yourself can also make a request to the Clerk of the State Council to replace the physical hearing with telehearing. The advantage is that the hearing is not delayed for months.