What's wrong with this lawyer?!

It was another drizzly rainy day, and Old Tang woke up a bit late.

The main reason was that this kind of weather was just too good for sleeping, and on such a day, if there was nothing important to do, Old Tang even felt like burying his head under the covers and sleeping until oblivion.

But after all, he was a lawyer, and since he had already accepted the commission, he definitely needed to settle the case quickly, although waiting one more day would mean that Liu Xuehong could receive one more day of state compensation, criminal cases do not work that way.

It was still better to think about getting the person released sooner.

After getting up and packing his things, Old Tang found a coffee shop on the ground floor of the hotel and started preparing the complaint.

Administrative litigation seems easy on the surface, as one can directly sue, and if the opponent cannot produce evidence to prove their innocence, then they are deemed to be in violation.

It sounds as if it's all in the palm of one's hand, with no need for a lawyer to participate, but in reality, administrative litigation is never easy.

Just getting a court to accept the case is a tough hurdle to clear, in some small county towns, if you file an administrative lawsuit, just wait, they have plenty of tricks to delay you.

And the key point in this case lies in identifying the correct defendant!

Some people might say, isn't it obvious that it's a problem with Jingnan County, so just sue the county, right?

That definitely won't do. Administrative litigation is particularly strict about the parties involved; you must sue the unit that carries out the specific administrative action, and the grounds for the lawsuit should also be that specific administrative act.

House expropriation and demolition involve many administrative acts, so firstly you need to identify the proper defendant, and secondly the specific administrative act that serves as the fact and basis of the lawsuit.

For example, in this case, the Jingnan County government is definitely not the defendant, because Old Tang, after inquiring from various sources, already knows that Jingnan County has a special expropriation office for expropriation and demolition.

This office is the designated expropriation authority by the county government.

According to Article 25 of the "Supreme People's Court's Explanation on the Application of Administrative Litigation Law" issued in 2018, if the expropriation authority designated by the city or county people's government carries out administrative actions during the process of organizing and implementing housing expropriation and compensation, and the person being expropriated is dissatisfied and files a lawsuit, then the expropriation authority should be the defendant.

Of course, this doesn't mean that this expropriation office is definitely the defendant, as there are other scenarios as well.

As for the urban management officers who appeared on the scene at the time, they belonged to the expropriation office, the authorized demolition implementation authority, and generally speaking, many places would entrust some companies...

I guess most people would know about this, as there have been some reports in the news, about employees of certain companies being involved in such and such during forced demolitions, all belonging to this type of company.

Moreover, in the past, many of these companies were actually related to the real estate companies that were preparing for development...

Although according to Article 27 of the "Regulations on the Expropriation and Compensation for Houses on State-Owned Land", the participation of construction units in demolition is prohibited, meaning real estate development companies are not allowed to be involved in demolition activities.

But in practice, just setting up a new company would suffice...

In any case, Old Tang had seen plenty of these things in his past life, so it was surprising to him that the expropriation office here hadn't found a demolition company, indicating that they were probably planning a lawful demolition.

Perhaps they did not pay attention to the procedure...

However, even if there was a demolition company involved, it wouldn't matter. According to the second clause of Article 25 from the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Administrative Litigation Law, if the demolition implementation authority does something within their authorized scope, the defendant should still be the expropriation office.

Of course, if they did something beyond the scope of their authorization, then it's a different story. For instance, if you are authorized to demolish lawfully, but there was an issue with the demolition procedure, then that act falls outside the scope of authorization.

Right? It's obvious that the Expropriation Office wouldn't include in their commission an instruction for you to violate regulations.

At this point, it's one of the aforementioned exceptions – the defendant should be the demolition implementation authority, nothing to do with the Expropriation Office.

If you sue the Expropriation Office, you're bound to get a ruling that dismisses your case due to incorrect identification of the defendant.

This type of dismissal does not even review your facts, because you sued the wrong party.

Doesn't this feel familiar, rather like those issues created by the food delivery platforms before? Without hiring a lawyer, would you even know whom to sue?

Though according to the rules, if you sue the wrong party, the court should tell you who the correct defendant is but, well... if they don't tell you, you're out of luck.

So dissecting legal provisions can actually be quite interesting, and in his past life, Old Tang also enjoyed doing so, though it was all for making money.

In this case, however, no proper preparations for compensation had been made in advance; in fact, the money was not yet in place when they applied for the Jingnan County Court to carry out compulsory execution. Whose fault was that? Naturally, it was the fault of the Expropriation Office.

Therefore, the defendant is the Jingnan County Expropriation Office, and the administrative act challenged is the original "City Demolition Order (20XX) No. 013."

For now, the implementation authority mentioned later does not need to be concerned; they carried out their actions according to procedure.

The complaint was quickly drafted, with just one core point: confirming that this demolition dispute decision was illegal. As long as this is confirmed as illegal, it would be equivalent to the demolition action being illegal.

Gathering evidence was even simpler: the legal representative's information of the office being sued and the decision document of the dispute resolution that Old Tang had worked hard to obtain during this period.