First Court Reference to the Argentine Legal Digest

As mentioned in Marval News # 139, on May 21, 2014, the Senate approved the Argentine Legal Digest bill (“ALD”) where all, existing and repealed laws, were identified, including supranational regulations applicable in Argentina.
The ALD was passed by Law No. 26,939 and published in the Official Gazette on June 16, 2014. However, the ALD will become fully effective once a 180-day period from the enactment elapses. Such period has been set for filing potential objections to the ALD. 
Notwithstanding such objection’s period, a decision issued on July 8, 2014, by the Court of Appeals of Trelew (Province of Chubut) in re “Álvarez, N.V. v. Lautaro S.R.L.” has already referred to the ALD in order to decide a request for leave to appeal before the Local Supreme Court.
The case concerned a claim for the termination of a contract and a compensation for damages, grounded on non-performance of the defendant alleged by the plaintiff.
The claim was dismissed by both the Trial Court and the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals’ judgment stated that the plaintiff failed to comply with the previous notice of default established by Section 1204 of the Civil Code in order to enforce the implied termination rule.
The plaintiff challenged the ruling and applied for leave to appeal before the Local Supreme Court, which was denied by the Court of Appeals.
Among other arguments, the plaintiff indicated that the case involved a consumer relationship, so it should have been decided under Law No. 24,240 (Section 10, Subsection “C”) -which represents mandatory legislation-, instead of Section 1204 of the Civil Code.
In order to reject the motion, the Court of Appeals understood that the plaintiff’s extreme opinion technically implied emptying the whole Chapter of Private Law provided by the Argentine Civil Code, as long as every hypothesis of a contract, a legal obligation or civil liability might fall under the consumer regulation.   
In this regard, the Court of Appeals considered that the plaintiff’s argument has been contradicted by the recent enactment of the ALD, which ratified the enforceability of the Civil Code –renamed as Law E-0026- and proved that the subordination of the Civil Code to the Consumer Protection Law was not the legislative intention, as both pieces of legislation remain enforceable with their own scope.
According to the ruling, the enactment of the ALD allows to drop prior allegations with regard to the timing and specificity of the Consumer Protection Law, since legislators would have eliminated any alleged preemption between both laws, which currently represent a single legal body enacted simultaneously.  
In addition, the Court of Appeals emphasized that the Civil Code -under the new nomenclature- remains enforceable within its differential scope of application, whereas implied repealing theories arising from the later enactment of the Consumer Protection Law should be discarded due to the recent approval of the ALD.
On similar lines, the Court of Appeals highlighted that the enactment of the ALD, allows for the idea that the Consumer Protection Law was passed to correct or limit the scope of the Civil Code. On such basis, the ruling observed that both, the Civil Code and the Consumer Protection Law retain their different areas of influence which should coexist, as the one cannot be replaced by the other.
Lastly, the Court of Appeals underlined that the period to file objections granted by Section 20 of Law No. 26,939 does not prevent the enforceability of the ALD, which should be considered the current will of the Argentine Congress that decided to reorganize the whole Argentine legal system all at once.
Although it is our understanding that the ALD will be in full effect after 180 days from its enactment and despite some debatable issues addressed by the Court of Appeals, we believe that the decision is worthy of this mention, as it has become the first precedent referring to the novel legal body approved by the Argentine Congress.