The Pudong New Area People's Court's half-year trial with a special department, set up exclusively for simple civil and financial cases, has improved efficiency, the Shanghai Higher People's Court announced yesterday.

　　The Higher People's Court now wants to expand the practice to other district courts, officials told a news briefing.

　　In the first half of this year, the Pudong court's special department heard 3,550 cases, up 55.9 percent from what the court handled a year earlier. The number accounted for 34.9 percent of total civil cases at the court.

　　The special department announced decisions on 2,943 cases, 54.5 percent more than the court's verdicts year-on-year, and 66 percent were concluded via non-verdict methods like mediation or case withdrawal.

　　In addition, rulings in about 73 percent cases were given after the first hearing.

　　The number of civil cases in the city has risen by 10 percent annually over the last five years. Insgroupsto save judicial costs, all local courts were ordered last August to adopt a "simplified process" in handling small cases in which plaintiffs seek between 30,000 yuan (US,614) and 50,000 yuan in compensation.

　　Under the simplified process, judges are required to wind up cases within three months, or the cases have to undergo the normal mode, which can last up to six months in related departments.

　　"The transfer (from small case to a normal one) means many procedures will be repeated, which is a waste of people's time and energy," said Pan Furen, director of the Pudong court. "To solve this problem, our court also conducted a trial of setting up a special group within the department to handle cases surpassing the three-month deadline to improve efficiency without transferring the cases to other departments."

　　Officials at yesterday's briefing also revealed that local courts are witnessing more cases involving customer complaints about products and services.

　　The Nanhui District People's Court said it had received 20 cases involving customer rights this year, covering a wide scope of grievances.

　　Wang Xiaoxiang, vice director of the court, cited a recent case in which a customer filed a lawsuit against an auto dealer for fraud because the car he bought was not what was described in the contract. The court ordered the dealer to pay 200,000 yuan to the customer, twice the car's cost.