By Leticia Cordeiro

This text aims to address the main changes brought about by the Labor Reform regarding the appeal deposit in the Labor Court.

The appeal deposit has the legal nature of a guarantee of judgment, its payment is exclusively for the Defendant, and as for its value, it is based on the country's current minimum wage and the value of the conviction, showing itself to be variable, being able to reach the ceilings of R$ 9,513.16 and R$ 19,026.32, currently, depending on the appeal to be filed.

Given these premises, it is noted that due to the high value, in some cases the Defendant is prevented from accessing the double level of jurisdiction. This situation becomes even worse when one takes into account the short payment period – 8 days. In this sense, some doctrinal schools argue that the appeal deposit implied an even more severe penalty than the conviction, as it entails: the restriction of defense and violates the principle of adversarial proceedings and full defense.

Regarding these issues, the new labor law (Law 13,467/2017) allows for a reduction of up to half of the value of appeal deposits for non-profit entities, domestic employers, individual microentrepreneurs, microenterprises and small businesses, as provided for in art. 899, § 9º of the CLT. Furthermore, it allows for exemption from payment for philanthropic entities, companies under judicial recovery and, most importantly, innovates with the possibility of legal entities or individual entrepreneurs obtaining the benefit of free legal aid.

Another new peculiarity brought about by the Labor Reform is set out in article 899, § 11 of the CLT, which allows the replacement of the appeal deposit with a bank guarantee or judicial surety insurance.

 The first hypothesis – bank guarantee – in summary, consists of the guarantee of compliance with the obligation given by the Bank, as a guarantor. In the second hypothesis – judicial guarantee insurance – already used in other areas of law, consists of proof of the existence of an insurance contract, in which the insuring party undertakes to pay the premium, in the case of the appeal deposit or the entirety of the process, depending on the conditions agreed with the insured. In both options, the most important thing is that the Defendant does not need to have the immediate amount to file the appeal.

Regardless of the form of reduction or guarantee, the legislator brought great possibilities for greater access to justice.