Lawsuits filed with courts nationwide totaled about 6.86 million last year, down slightly from a year earlier. Civil cases on the merits rose while criminal cases on the merits fell, showing diverging trends. Rehabilitation and bankruptcy filings all increased, indicating that companies and individuals turned more often to debt restructuring and insolvency procedures amid a continued economic slowdown and price pressures.
According to the judicial yearbook published on the 29th by the National Court Administration under the Supreme Court, 6,863,796 lawsuits were filed with courts over the past year, down 0.8% from 6,915,400 in 2024.
Civil cases accounted for 4,699,251, or 68.5%, criminal cases for 1,762,877, or 25.7%, and family cases for 199,435, or 2.9%.
Civil cases on the merits came to 884,494, up 0.5% from 879,799 a year earlier. Criminal cases on the merits, by contrast, fell 1.4% to 342,426 from 347,292. Cases on the merits comprise civil, family, administrative, intellectual property, election, criminal trial and medical custody cases. Cases other than those on the merits include civil mediation, enforcement and non-contentious cases, administrative applications, summary criminal orders, and juvenile and domestic protection cases.
By level of appeal, civil and criminal caseloads moved in opposite directions. Civil cases on the merits at the first instance numbered 805,366, up 3.2% from a year earlier, while second-instance filings rose 1.3% to 59,475. Filings at the final appellate court came to 12,714, down 15.0% from 14,958. The 2024 figure, however, included an unusually large number of suits brought by a single litigant; excluding those, the comparison base falls to 13,026, putting the actual decline at 2.4%.
Criminal trials, in which formal proceedings are held, drew 222,833 first-instance filings, down 7.2% from a year earlier. Appellate filings, by contrast, rose 3.5% to 85,031. Criminal filings at the final appellate court jumped 37.7% to 34,272 from 24,889. Excluding the unusually large number of suits brought by a single litigant last year, however, the figure comes to 25,399, an actual increase of 2.1%.
Rehabilitation and bankruptcy filings all increased. Corporate rehabilitation cases rose 20.8% to 1,321, and corporate bankruptcy cases rose 17.6% to 2,282. Individual rehabilitation cases climbed 15.2% to 149,147, and individual bankruptcy cases rose 2.0% to 40,909.
Contested divorce cases continued to decline. First-instance filings for divorce through the courts totaled 25,638 last year, down 4.5% from 26,849. The figure has fallen steadily from 29,861 in 2022 and 27,501 in 2023.
Juvenile protection cases, heard by juvenile divisions of family and district courts, totaled 51,325 last year, up 0.9% from 50,848. Of the minors referred in such cases, 30,410, or 60.2%, received protective dispositions, and 10,054 of them — 33.1% — were aged 14 to under 16.
The judicial yearbook, published annually by the National Court Administration, compiles data on the judiciary's organization, the administration of judicial affairs and key case statistics.
