In a civil proceeding, being right is not enough: everyone who must be part of the case has to be sued. If someone whose presence the law requires is missing, the case can be exposed to a nullity declared even years later, no matter that no one raised it before. That is exactly what the Supreme Court of Justice, Civil, Agrarian and Rural Cassation Chamber, in ruling SC451-2026, of June 9, 2026, authored by Justice Martha Patricia Guzmán Álvarez.
What happened in the case?
Promotora Air Port Plaza S.A.S. and Pryloc S.A.S. sued Mr. Cavard Martínez seeking a declaration that he had breached a settlement agreement executed on December 3, 2015, and to be released from paying the amount set out in subsection (b) of clause five of that agreement: $15,400,000,000 Colombian pesos. The trial court dismissed the defendant's defenses and the claims in his counterclaim, and declared the breach; the Civil Chamber of the Bogotá Superior Tribunal upheld the decision.
The defendant raised eight grounds in his cassation appeal. The Court only needed to examine the eighth, based on the fifth statutory ground, because it was sufficient to decide the case: it challenged the improper joinder of parties, since the trust company holding the disputed rights — representing the separate trust estates over which the obligations under the settlement agreement fell — had not been summoned to the proceeding.
What is necessary joinder, and why is it so delicate to get it right?
When a substantive legal relationship cannot be resolved without the presence of all its holders, procedural law requires that all of them be brought into the proceeding as necessary co-parties. This is not a minor formality: if the proceeding moves forward without one of them having been summoned, the defect can nullify everything done, however substantial the evidentiary effort or however far the case had progressed.
In this case, the Court recalled that the trust company had to be joined to the proceeding because the obligations in dispute — the financial penalties under the settlement agreement — fell on separate trust estates that it represented, in legal capacities distinct from those of the parties that were already in the proceeding.
The rule set by the Supreme Court
The Chamber was emphatic on a point that often sparks debate in practice: a nullity for failure to join a necessary party does not depend on whether the interested party had raised it during the proceedings. In the Court's own words, “the merits of the ground do not depend on whether the nullity had been raised during the proceedings, since the defect arising from the failure to summon a necessary co-party operates regardless of whether it was raised before”. Relying on its own precedent (CSJ SC2496-2022), the Court explained that this omission is a defect that “falls within the complete omission of the relevant stage” as to the party that was not joined, and therefore is not cured by the mere passage of time or the parties' silence.
The ruling: it quashes and voids
On that basis, the Court quashed the ruling of the Bogotá Superior Tribunal and declared the nullity of everything done since the first-instance judgment, due to the failure to summon the trust company. In practice, years of litigation — two full instances and a cassation proceeding — were rendered void by a defect that could have been avoided from the outset of the claim.
What this means for litigants
The lesson is simple to state, but requires discipline at the stage of drafting the claim: before suing or answering a claim, it is necessary to carefully verify who truly holds each legal relationship involved in the dispute, especially where separate trust estates, along with trusts, trust companies acting as representatives, or any structure in which the rights do not belong to whoever appears to be negotiating or contracting. Leaving out that party is not a minor risk that can be fixed later: it can bring down the entire proceeding, without the passage of time curing it.
Do you have a related case?
This is a general informational note about a recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Justice; each proceeding has its own particulars as to the parties that must be joined. If you are involved in a civil or commercial dispute — especially one involving trusts, separate trust estates, or complex contractual structures — and would like a specific review of your case, at Iniciativa Legal we can assist you.
Source: Supreme Court of Justice, Civil, Agrarian and Rural Cassation Chamber, ruling SC451-2026 of June 9, 2026 (case file 11001-31-03-016-2016-00696-01), Judicial Gazette No. 06-2026, Civil, Agrarian and Rural Cassation Chamber.