A atuação do juiz pela efetividade das ações coletivas relativas a lides de consumo

Abstract

Consumer rights achieved became a fundamental right under the Constitution of the Republic of 1988, and consumer protection is now included among the general principles governing economic activity in Brazil. With the massification of society, the development of group litigation, and the growing internal consumer market, collective protection of consumer rights has become an instrument of social peace, and merits careful treatment by the courts. Justice is not achieved by a simple pronouncement that rights exist. Many changes made to the law since the 1990s, especially to the Code of Civil Procedure, are directed to ensuring that citizens who look to the courts to enforce their rights will obtain a complete, concrete and satisfactory remedy, within a reasonable period of time. In such case there will be effectiveness of the justice dispensed by the courts. In group litigation, especially consumer-related actions, the concern with the effectiveness of justice should be even greater, given the impact of group litigation and the benefits to society generated by facilitating consumers access to justice and preventing multiple individual actions over the same matter, which could lead to long delays and the risk of contradictory decisions. For this reason, in group litigation the courts must maintain a balance in the rights of suppliers and consumers under the substantive and procedural law, and ensure that the law on consumer protection provisions is upheld. The legislation governing group litigation is not yet sophisticated enough to meet this new demand in Brazilian society, although several important bills on collective actions are waiting for voting and approval. Until then, the courts have an even more essential role in ensuring that consumers rights are respected. The posture adopted by the courts in deciding individual actions, especially lawsuits that do not involve consumer relations, is not sufficient in group litigation. The decision-maker must be pro-active in all the phases of collective proceedings (the parties claims and defences, resolution of procedural issues, taking of evidence, judgment, appeals and enforcement of judgment), leaving behind old archetypes. In this new mission, the procedural principles that guide the courts must be interpreted with a view to making collective access to justice effective. This thesis examines the role of the judge in processing group litigation of consumer claims, looking not only at the main aspects of the law related to the subject, but also (with no pretension of giving an exhaustive list) pointing to some of the practical attitudes that courts should adopt to ensure that the constitutional objectives in play are achieved. Only through an innovative approach by the courts will it be possible to meet this new social demand and give consumers real protection of their rights within a reasonable timeframe