Legal Dissertation on the Abstinence of Natural Law from the Fallacious Rules of the Putative Summary Process

regarding the mode of executing, if the thing to be adjudicated is in payment, or if an auction or sale of movables occurs, or if a sequestrator must be appointed, and so regarding the rest.

§. 19. Therefore, as far as the first class is concerned, many things are indeed brought forward to avoid the requirements of the ordinary process in summary cases. But daily practice teaches, and examples will occur subsequently, that hardly any process is found that does not consume infinite time and entire years regarding dilatory matters, so that it is not new that after a process has been carried out for a long time, after many years have passed, there is still controversy over the contestation of the suit, and a pronouncement must be made. For although the exact libel is not required in the said manner, yet so many other questions occur regarding the libel that must be determined, which cannot fail to promote longevity, for example, regarding the accumulation of several persons, uncertainty, then regarding the citation, regarding the question of its legality, whether a subsidiary citation is necessary, whether a real one is to be admitted, whether the insinuation formal notification of a legal act was duly made, and how these are to be inquired into, then regarding contumacy willful disobedience to a court and the accusation of it, both against the plaintiff and the defendant, how that is done, regarding the dilatory citation, how regarding the peremptory a citation that precludes further delay, whether in this case the defendant is to be held as denying, and the plaintiff is to be admitted to proof without the defendant being heard, so that the defendant loses dilatory exceptions, or whether he is to be held as confessed or convicted, or whether in doubt he should still be admitted, and so after controversies have been carried out for a long time, with so many suspensive remedies applied thereto, the process is almost to be started anew, and finally, how legitimate impediments are to be proven, and which are to be held as such, when a prorogation extension of time is to be granted, and how often, and so to infinity.

§. 20. And thus, since there is a minimal question regarding the solemnity of the libel and the contestation of the suit, it easily appears how fallacious the rules are in dilatory matters regarding summary cases, unless some other remedy is sought for all these. Nor does it matter to the change of the thing that advice is supplied that the judge, although he cannot remove dilatory exceptions, must nevertheless urge the parties so that everything is expedited in one term. For it is clear from what has been said that all remedies are empty because of so many other questions occurring.