Litigância predatória e habitual: mecanismos do processo civil brasileiro contra o abuso do direito de ação

Abstract

The present study seeks to expose the Brazilian Judiciary system’s overload, focusing mainly in one of the main reasons for such: the mass predatory litigation pursued by certain citizens that, in clear abuse of rights, distribute lawsuits in a pulverized manner throughout courts of law, mobilizing judiciary institutions and harming the regular exercise by third parties of their own rights. To reach this objective, the historical and constitutional origins of the fundamental right of access to justice will be exposed, as well as the problems that arise when it’s set against other fundamental rights provided by the Republic’s Constitution and infra-constitutional legislation. An analysis will be conducted regarding the concept of objective/subjective bad faith and how the filing of frivolous lawsuits can be a manifestation of abuse of said rights, by their own holder. Through hermeneutical, comparative and dialectical methods, the civil procedure’s mechanisms which seek to hinder mass and predatory litigation will be studied under a banner of good-faith and probity, while an analysis of case law and doctrine (both domestic and international) will bring to light not only how such mechanisms are handled nowadays, but also how they could be used more efficiently, aiming to employ them in their full potential, towards the protection of the judiciary system’s own dignity and of those unjustly made defendants in such legal adventures