NEWS
The Superior Court of Justice (“STJ”) has approved the Precedent No. 613, with the following wording: ” The theory of consolidated fact situations it not applicable to matters related to Environmental Law”
Analyzing this matter, certain insecurity and legal instability may be expected, since the Precedent seems to conflict with legal norms that recognized the consolidation of generic concrete cases on “consolidated fact situations”.
As an example, the Supreme Court has decided by the constitutionality of certain provisions of the Forest Code that translates the applicability of the “theory of consolidated fact situations”, since the Forest Code authorizes the continuation of certain activities and other situations in environmental law – that in theory may cause damage to the environment.
In this scenario, the Precedent could have excepted the legal hypotheses that authorized some “consolidated fact situations”, like others that allow signing commitments to eliminate irregularities, as provided by the recent inclusion of the Article 26 in the Law of Introduction to the norms of Brazilian Law, included by Federal Law No. 13,655/2018.
Although not provided with binding effect, the Precedent can be invoked by the Environmental Control and Protection Entities to question past events, which is why its contents cannot be ignored, mainly because of the prestige of precedents and the approach to Common Law brought by new Code of Civil Procedure, in particular by its Article 489, item VI.
