STJ decides that actions against 123 Milhas will be concentrated in MG

The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) decided that the legal actions against 123 Milhas taking place in five regional courts will be concentrated in Minas Gerais. According to the decision released on Friday (20), the proposal came from the Minas Gerais court itself and will concentrate the actions taking place in Paraná, Rio de Janeiro, Paraíba, Rondônia and Mato Grosso. There is a possibility that the one from Amazonas will also join the group.

According to the STJ, this concentration of cases in just one court seeks to “guarantee equality, avoid conflicting decisions and seek more effective protection”. According to the Brazilian Citizenship Institute, more than 700 thousand people and companies were harmed by 123 Milhas.

According to judge Renato Castro, cooperation magistrate and supervisor of the STJ’s Precedents and Collective Actions Management Center (Nugepnac), the crisis faced by 123 Milhas led Public Ministries and state Public Defenders to present collective actions, which created the risk of divergent decisions.

“Processing these actions in several courts could result in different decisions for similar cases, violating equality and causing legal uncertainty,” explained Castro.

He also highlighted the importance of effective management of collective actions, particularly after the decision of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in 2021, which declared article 16 of Law 7,347/1985 unconstitutional, which limited the territorial scope of the effects of sentences handed down. in public civil actions.

Renato Castro also emphasized that the concentration of collective actions in the TJMG will facilitate communication between the court that is taking care of the judicial recovery of the tourism company (1st Business Court of Belo Horizonte) and the court responsible for grouping the collective actions, resulting in greater efficiency and procedural economy.

Subsequently, the next step will be to make the courts aware of the need to suspend individual actions. Castro highlighted that the filing of collective actions does not prevent consumers from filing individual actions.

The STJ, he says, has already decided that “once a class action is filed, individual actions that deal with the same fundamental issue must remain suspended. This is because the effects of the sentence handed down in the collective action can benefit those who filed individual lawsuits.”