2023 Laws of Puerto Rico › TITLE THIRTY-TWO - Code of Civil Procedure (§§ 1 — 3576) › Subtitle 4 - Special Legal Proceedings Law (§§ 2241 — 3355a) › PART III - Real Property Actions (§§ 2761 — 2886) › Chapter 237 - Controversies and Provisional Legal Status (§§ 2871 — 2877) › § 2873 - Proceedings

For the court and the magistrate to acquire jurisdiction over a controversy or matter in accordance with the provisions of this chapter, the following proceeding shall be followed:
(a) Any person of legal age may appear before a magistrate and file under oath a verbal or written complaint, concise and simple, as to difficulties he has with another person or persons over any of the controversies or matters referred to in § 2872 of this title.
(b) If from the complaint it appears that there exists a legal controversy to be adjudicated, the magistrate shall order the subpoenaing of the parties involved to appear before him within a term not exceeding five (5) days. The fact of issuing the subpoena shall be equivalent to the filing of the complaint, and shall be recorded in a book ad hoc by the magistrate. Nonappearance of a person duly summoned according to this chapter shall be punishable as contempt to the court presided over by the magistrate who issued the subpoena. Third persons who may offer information with respect to the controversy may be summoned.
(c) On the day of appearance the magistrate shall hear the parties orally, and, if they present witnesses or other evidence, he shall set a date for continuation of the hearing and during such continuation he shall hear the witnesses presented and receive the pertinent evidence submitted. At such hearings the interested parties may appear assisted by counsel, and shall have the right to cross-examine the witnesses testifying against them. The legal rules on evidence shall be applicable only to the extent that they do not denature or hinder the immediate solution of the complaint object of the controversy. The Rules of Civil Procedure in force shall not be applicable to the proceeding established herein.
(d) It shall be the duty of the magistrate, in the course of the hearing, to try to bring the parties to agreement so that the controversy may be satisfactorily settled. Were this not possible, and if as a result of the hearing the magistrate is convinced that there exists, under the law, a controversy between the parties, requiring judicial adjudication, he shall enter a resolution determining which of the parties is probably right. In line with this resolution, the magistrate shall determine a provisional legal status, which shall be binding on the parties while the controversy is prosecuted according to due process of law. The resolution may be authorizing or sanctioning a specific act or action of a person, requesting from this or various persons the specific performance of a duty or abstention from performing a particular action. The resolution shall be given orally, but within the term of five (5) days it shall be written. The written resolution shall be simple, and shall contain a synopsis of the pleadings of each party, the [procedural history], the grounds tending to establish the evidence submitted by each party, the conclusions of the magistrate to the effect that one of the parties is probably right, expressing the grounds for and the determination of the provisional legal status, stating the acts authorized or prohibited or the rights provisionally recognized. In rendering his verbal resolution the magistrate shall explain to the parties the scope thereof, and shall inform them of the offense they would commit and the penalty they would incur should they violate the judicial order. The magistrate shall also inform the person or persons against whom the resolution is entered of their right to bring the case to a competent court, in the ordinary course of the proceeding. The resolution shall be binding from the date it is entered orally, but shall be served on the interested parties or their counsel within ten (10) days thereafter. The dispositive part of the resolution shall be transcribed in the book ad hoc for complaints under the provisions of this chapter.
History —July 23, 1974, No. 140, Part 1, p. 650, § 3.