[Wonju Legal Consultation Won Case] A Case Won Through a Subsequent Appeal After a Wonju Legal Consultation

The other party was a part-time worker who had worked at the client's store and filed the lawsuit to recover wages and severance pay that had not been paid.

It was correct that the client should pay the wages and severance pay, but the problem was the matter of a loan that the part-time worker had personally borrowed from the client.

Because of that loan, the opinions of the client and the other party clashed, and the matter escalated to a lawsuit,

and the part-time worker filed a lawsuit against the client demanding the unpaid wages, severance pay, and the return of the loan.

Article 173(1) of the Civil Procedure Act provides, “Where a party was unable to observe a peremptory period for a reason not attributable to the party, the party may supplement the neglected procedural act within two weeks from the date on which the reason ceased to exist.”

The judgment was pronounced without the client knowing that the first-instance lawsuit was proceeding, and the client learned all of these facts only after the written judgment was served on the client by the method of service by public notice and the judgment became final.

At the time of the Wonju legal consultation, the conditions for a subsequent appeal were met, so a subsequent appeal was reviewed and submitted, and it was soon granted.

At the time of the Wonju legal consultation as well, the wages and severance pay were not in dispute, but the loan left room for dispute in the lawsuit.

This was because the amount of the loan that each side asserted differed. The amount the other party was asserting and the amount the client intended to pay were different,

so at the legal consultation, based on the materials submitted by the client, preparations for oral argument were made in order to rebut the other party's assertion.

At the Wonju legal consultation, conciliation was mentioned.

Because the matter of the unpaid wages and severance pay was a part that the client also acknowledged, the client had the intention to pay the other party and, at the legal consultation, expressed the intention to pay immediately if the lawsuit concluded through conciliation.

In that case, because there was a possibility that the case could be concluded through conciliation, the client also considered an application for conciliation.

At the Wonju legal consultation, the client wished for the case to conclude as a conciliation matter. In civil cases, a lawsuit is often converted into conciliation either at the parties' request or by the court's own authority,

because, rather than proceeding with the case through litigation, reaching the desired outcome through conciliation between the parties can be more helpful to the economy of litigation.

In civil cases, because the court may, on its own authority and regardless of the parties' intentions, convert a matter into a conciliation case, the assistance of an attorney can be essential.

This is because, when setting the conciliation terms, the attorney must reach a compromise with the other party while also securing the result that the client wants. To strike this balance, it can be said that the attorney's help is genuinely needed.

As mentioned at the Wonju legal consultation, an application for conciliation was made, but the other party would not compromise at all on the loan, and in the end the conciliation broke down.

When conciliation does not come together in this way, the case returns to litigation, and each assertion is contested through litigation as at the start.

We once again submitted rebuttal materials regarding the other party's loan assertion, revealed that the claimed loan was false, recalculated the wages and severance pay, and expressed only the intention to pay the precise amount.

In this way, a case may end through conciliation, but it is also important to prepare well for the situation in which no compromise is reached with the other party and the matter returns to litigation.

Even though the first-instance judgment had already concluded and become final, at the time of the Wonju legal consultation the case was examined closely to explore the possibility of a subsequent appeal,

and as a result, the subsequent appeal was lawfully accepted, and the case result overturned the first-instance judgment, and the client won.

As for the unpaid wages and severance pay, the other party's excessive claim was entirely dismissed, and the client paid only the proper amount. Although the client bore the initial fault of nonpayment,

this was a case in which the client prevailed in the other party's malicious lawsuit that had exploited that fault to make an excessive claim.