Civil division

At the beginning of 2006, Civil division of the Supreme Court of Serbia was composed of 30 judges and 30 advisers. All the judges make seven panels acting in cases of general civil law matter, whilst two out of seven panels decide on extraordinary legal remedies against legally valid decisions issued by commercial courts in litigation procedures.

The most common cases processed by this division refer to the proprietary, inheritance, commercial, labor, family, obligations matters (most commonly compensation of material and other damage, debts, contracts etc.), copyrights and many other cases. There is also a large number of cases on conflict of jurisdiction between the courts and on transfer of jurisdiction of the court.

The Court is represented by a three-judge panel when hears appeal in second instance. The review of decision is, as a rule, conducted without a hearing, however, a court may have a hearing if a first instance judgment had already been revoked and the revoked judgment was based on incorrect and incomplete finding of the facts or if during the first instance proceedings a serious violation of provisions regulating the litigation had been committed.

The Civil division hears extraordinary legal remedies in a five-judge panel (unless the law stipulates differently) upon the revision in the civil-commercial disputes, request for protection of legality in civil and commercial disputes, appeal with alternative proposal for revision (direct revision) and proposal for new trail.

A seven-judges panel hears appeals against legally valid decisions by the Supreme Court, whilst a ninejudges panel, who were not in the panel that decided on the appealed case, hears the appeal against decisions of the other panels of the Supreme Court.

In accordance with the Law on Civil Procedure, the Civil division is also obliged to perform upon certain disputable legal issue when there is an aggregation of litigations presented before the first instance courts, with the same facts and outstanding legal issue. Such judicial decisions are published in the „Bulletin of Case Law“ aiming at establishing a uniform case law for the courts.