This is the fourth legal notice to be published since the outbreak of Covid-19 and which deals with the suspension of legal time limits. Its provisions have retroactive effect as from 2^nd April 2020 but whereas the other legal notices were published in terms of the Public Health Act, this last legal notice has been published in terms of the newly enacted  Act XIII of 2020, (https://legislation.mt/eli/cap/609/eng/pdf), which specifically deals with the Suspension and Interruption of Legal Time Limits. The title of the Act is a bit of a misnomer – although it refers to both suspension and interruption of time limits, the legal notice is actually suspending time limits.

The regulations are largely a repetition of the previous legal notices with a number of changes:

1. It has now been made amply clear that the suspension extends to those time periods

• Under any substantive or procedural law
• Includes both prescriptive and peremptory time periods
• Includes any time periods decreed or ordered by any court, government department, government agency or public authority

The suspension remains  in force until the lapse of 7 days from the lifting of the order closing the courts.

2. Apart from time periods relating to the court or to certain government entities, the legal notice has also suspended time periods established in agreements, (both private writings and public deeds), including time periods for the performance of any obligation set out in the agreement. Legislation has therefore intervened in private agreements, but this intervention is not absolute but conditional on whether and “to the extent that the closure has a direct effect on the ability of any party to exercise its rights or to perform its obligations in terms of the agreement”, Therefore the suspension has to be a direct consequence of the court closure and would have to effect the ability of a party to exercise its rights.

This suspension remains  in force until the lapse of 20 days from the lifting of the order closing the courts.

Regulation 4 makes it clear that the legal time periods are suspended also in relation to the obligations of public notaries to register the deeds they publish, to pay the tax collected by them in exercising their profession, the submission of any information or documentation, the running of any time period related to fiscal benefits, incentives or exemptions and the running of time with respect to the performance of any obligation contained in any deed or private writing, including a registered promise of sale agreement; and the running of time with respect to the expiration of any registered promise of sale agreement.

This latest legal notice has not substituted the previously published legal notices on the same subject but the four notices continue to remain in force but where different time limits are mentioned in the legal notices, the longer time limits are to apply.

http://www.justiceservices.gov.mt/DownloadDocument.aspx?app=lp&itemid;=30086&l;=1