A distinction must be made depending on whether the decision is handed down by a criminal court competent to judge misdemeanours or by a criminal court competent to judge crimes, as the rules are not the same depending on the nature of the decision handed down.

There is a relatively large amount of litigation in misdemeanour matters concerning the nature of the judgment, since a default decision and a decision rendered in the presence of both parties do not have the same legal consequences..

When a judgment is rendered by default, the appeal against it – called the opposition - overrules the decision and the case will be retried before the same court. A contradictory judgement is not subject to opposition, the only legal recourse that exists is the appeal, which means that the person who is absent during the trial but whose judgement is expressly qualified as contradictory will lose a degree of jurisdiction.

Classically , a distinction must be made between correctional default and criminal default..

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