Normative Instruction 41 of the Superior Labor Court (TST) recently marked that court’s position on labor procedural issues brought about by Law 13,467/2017 – the so-called Labor Reform – which went into effect on November 11, 2017.
The Court’s dome met and elaborated the instruction aiming at legal security in actions that proposed
previously
to the application of the new Law.
The most important points were:
- Ceiling for procedural costs:
- Anyone who filed a lawsuit or was sued before the Labor Reform came into effect will not benefit from the new ceiling for procedural costs (currently R$22,580.00, according to article 789 of the CLT). In this case the unlimited amount will be worth 2% of the value of the cause.
- Expert fees:
- The Normative Instruction established that, if the party that succumbs in the object of the expert examination is a beneficiary of free justice
not
will have to pay the expert fees, and the old rule will prevail for those who filed the lawsuit under the old law.
- Attorney’s fees:
- The law brought in its article 791-A and paragraphs the issue related to the attorney’s fees for defeat. However, the Court has positioned itself through the IN that they will only be applicable to lawsuits filed after the Labor Reform comes into effect.
- Prepostponent:
- Another important issue concerns the controversy surrounding the fact that the representative need not be an employee of the company. The TST understands that the new possibility foreseen in article 843 3 of the CLT, which opens the possibility for the representative not to be an employee of the company, will apply to all hearings held after the new law takes effect, regardless of when the lawsuit was filed.
- Of the punishments for the complainant:
- The punishments provided for in article 844 and its respective paragraphs, introduced by the Labor Reform in order to aggravate the consequences of the Complainant’s unjustified absence from a hearing, will only be applied in actions filed as of November 11, 2017.