Court of Appeal, February 12, 2025, Order concerning representation, UPC_CoA_634/2024, UPC_CoA_635/2024, UPC_CoA_636/2024

• All applicants of any application or action under the UPCA and RoP are required to be represented, except if the RoP waive the requirement of representation.
• An applicant under R. 262.1(b) RoP is not exempted from the requirement of R. 8.1 RoP and is therefore required to be represented (CoA, order of 8 February 2024, UPC_CoA_404/2023, App_584498/2023, Ocado).
• The objective of parties being represented by a lawyer is, on the one hand, to prevent private parties from acting on their own behalf before the Courts without using an intermediary and, on the other, to ensure that legal persons are defended by a representative who is sufficiently distant from the legal person which he or she represents (CoA, 11 February 2025, UPC_ CoA_563/2024, APL_53716/2024, Suinno vs Microsoft). Furthermore, it ensures the proper conduct of proceedings. For this purpose, representatives are subject to special duties (R. 284 and R. 290.1 RoP).

When such a matter is raised by the Court, there can be reason, depending on the circumstances, to provide the party with an opportunity to appoint a representative. For example, exceptional allowance to remedy the deficit of the absence of a representative because the Court of Appeal had not yet clarified that legal representation was required in the case of a request under R. 262.1 (b) RoP.