According to legal officials on the 28th, the court had received 525 trial appeal petitions through the previous day and sent only one to the full bench for review. It is the first case to move to a merits review since the system was introduced on March 12.
The case sent to the full bench is a petition filed by GC Pharma Co. seeking to overturn a Supreme Court decision. GC Pharma is the petitioner and the Supreme Court is the respondent. Law firm Yulchon represents GC Pharma.
The dispute stems from allegations of bid rigging in a Gardasil vaccine procurement tender. The Korea Fair Trade Commission previously issued corrective orders and imposed a fine, saying GC Pharma colluded by using wholesalers as "dummy" bidders during the purchasing process.
GC Pharma challenged the sanctions in court, but the Seoul High Court rejected its claim. In February, the Supreme Court also dismissed the company’s appeal without further review, a procedure used to reject appeals when statutory grounds are not met, thereby upholding the lower court ruling.
GC Pharma argues that the Supreme Court’s handling of the case violated its constitutional right to a trial. The company said that although a related criminal case ended in an acquittal on the grounds that there was no restriction of competition because there was no substantive competitive relationship, the Supreme Court did not properly examine whether there were legal errors raised in the appeal before dismissing it without review.
The court’s decision is expected to draw close attention in legal circles as the first trial appeal case. Since the revised Constitutional Court Act took effect on March 12, 525 petitions seeking to cancel court rulings have been filed. Of those, 37 were dismissed at a preliminary panel stage, and the GC Pharma case is the only one sent to the full bench.
The full bench is expected to focus on how far a Supreme Court dismissal without further review can infringe the constitutional right to a trial. The Constitutional Court plans to notify the chief justice of the Supreme Court and request a response, and to seek opinions from the Fair Trade Commission and Justice Minister Jeong Seong-ho.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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