As from the 16th March 2020, the courts of Malta and registries are closed until further notice as per the legal notice issued today. This is yet another measure in an effort to control the spread of COVID-19 by reducing crowd gathering and face-to-face interactions.
This development has followed a wave of deferments of court hearings for ongoing cases and directions for lawyers to attend court sittings without the presence of clients amongst others.
Concurrent to the closure of courts, a legal notice has been issued suspending the running of any legal and judicial terms and of any other time limits including peremptory periods applicable to proceedings or other procedures before the courts.
The suspension of judicial terms is in force indefinitely until further notice and shall last until seven days following the lifting of such suspension.
In practical terms, this means that clients having ongoing legal proceedings will not be prejudiced by the closure of courts. On the re-opening of courts, matters will be taken on at the point left before closure, ignoring the running of time during such closure in relation to any deadlines or time-frames.
