Questão jurídica principal
Whether the Justice of Peace office had to recuse itself from deciding a claim it had filed and a debt collection matter arising from its own prior decision.
Decisão extraída
Yes. The same authority cannot act as both claimant and judge in the same matter; the appearance and reality of lack of impartiality required recusal.
Fundamentação extraída
Under Art. 47(1)(b) and 48 CPC, recusal is required where a magistrate has acted in the same case in another capacity. The office had initiated the debt-enforcement step and the claim to remove the objection, and the pursued amount stemmed from its own prior decision. This created an obvious conflict with the guarantee of an impartial judge.