The Supreme Court declares that it is admissible for the judgment to terminate the proceedings by declaring the supervening loss of the subject matter, without having previously heard the parties, when the scope of the supervening circumstance has been the subject of procedural debate.
The Supreme Court has ruled, in judgment 1072/2021, of 21 July, on the possibility of declaring the termination of legal proceedings due to the supervening loss of the object when, although this cause has been raised, the supervening circumstance has been the subject of a full procedural debate that has allowed the parties to pronounce themselves on the issue.
In the present case, a final judgment in another case declared the decision under appeal to be void. This judgment was brought into the proceedings by the defendant, alleging a ground of inadmissibility of the appeal on the grounds of res judicata, but this ground was not upheld. In this situation, the Supreme Court of Extremadura handed down a judgment declaring that the appeal had become moot.
The Supreme Court understands that, from a formal point of view, it was not necessary to give a hearing to the parties or to raise the institution of the thesis, since the procedure in question will only be indispensable in the event that the issue to be dealt with has not been the subject of procedural debate. In this sense, the same Court concludes that as the scope and effects of the final judgment were discussed during the proceedings by means of the ground of inadmissibility raised, the hearing and the raising of the thesis are completely unnecessary.
On the other hand, from a material point of view, the Supreme Court understands that there is no legitimate interest on the part of the appellant in obtaining an annulment ruling -it should be remembered that this was already obtained with the aforementioned final judgment – but that what is sought is to modify this ruling to include the facts and allegations invoked in the claim for the purposes of any subsequent proceedings and it is not possible to review it in order to merely clarify the facts.
Consequently, the Supreme Court understands that it is admissible for the judgement to terminate the proceedings by declaring the supervening loss of the object – without making use of the raising of the thesis and giving the parties a hearing – when the case has been the subject of a full procedural debate, even if this has not been raised in the same way.
