Limitation Periods in Civil Law after Law No. 11,280/2006

Abstract

With the enactment of Law No. 11,280/2006, the legislator introduced paragraph 5 into Article 219 of the Code of Civil Procedure, establishing that “the judge shall recognize the limitation period ex officio”; this innovation also revoked Article 194 of the Civil Code, which previously provided the opposite; in light of well-established doctrinal understandings regarding limitation periods, this legislative change raised concerns about how to justify the possibility of judicial recognition of limitation periods ex officio, given that this legal institute has traditionally been grounded in private law principles.