The claimant and additional company won a tender conducted by the Postal Company for furnishing the post offices, a tender in which the company Segev Industries served as designer of the furniture items. Even though the designer was supposed to provide equal assistance to the two winners of the tender by making available the samples (mode-ups) forming the object of the tender, the latter has actually prepared the samples for the additional winner, while obstructing the claimant as regards the preparation of the samples (mode-ups), as it refused to deliver to it the plans for the execution of the samples in question.
The District Court in Jerusalem granted the request of the claimant, which was represented by our office, for issuing an injunction order prohibiting the continued execution of the furnishing works at the post offices of the Israel Postal Company, after it had found that a serious conflict of interests prevailed at the tender.

As a part of lawsuit filed by our office with the District Court in the Central Region District on behalf of the fellowship society of the Israel Association of Art Performance Managers and Stage Arts Producers, the Court was requested to prohibit the respondents, among them municipal and government corporation, from making the agreements for renting out the halls they thus administer conditional upon to provide booked tickets for no consideration for their own benefit.

In its judgment of 6.10.10, the Court entertained the lawsuit and established that the claimants are entitled, whether by virtue of the principle of public policy in the public interest or by virtue of the principle of good faith to a legal intervention that would ensure that the allocation of booked tickets to the respondents would be done only subject to the conduct of a well-ordered procedure, which would ensure that the distribution of the orders by the respondents is made in accordance with proper rules of administration. Such well-ordered procedure has to be backed by a written and duly approved procedure, which regulates a whole string of issues, including the authorized distribution of booked tickets, the entity thus authorized to allocate the reserved tickets according to the authorized criteria, the mechanism, by which the producer is able to make certain that the booked tickets are not subject to unauthorized use and so forth.
Since such procedure does not exist in any of the respondent, it was determined that the procedure for requesting booked tickets as implemented nowadays is an invalid practice that are null and void.

As part of a petition we filed with the District Court in Tel Aviv by name of the Hadran, we asserted that the association did not conduct a tender for distributing the tickets for the cup games, even though it is under obligation to do so.

In the judgment, the Court established that there is no disputing that, as a rule. The Federation is under an obligation to publish a tender for granting a franchise for selling tickets for games it thus organizes. The publication of the franchising tender, the integrated tender, as well as the new tender, indicates that, as a rule, the federation works to fulfill its duty to publish tenders for distributing tickets for the football games it thus organizes.
Notwithstanding the above statements, the Court dismissed the lawsuit because it had been filed “in the last minute”, but condemned the federation to pay costs to the petitioner.

Reply to a petition filed with the Supreme Court by Dekel Golan, as part of which the Court was requested to order Respondents 1-3 (the mayor of Tel Aviv, the commander of the Tel Aviv Police, and the officer in charge of the Tel Aviv region) to work to prevent the breach  of laws concerning the licensing of businesses and the by-laws of the Tel Aviv Municipality in the Neve Tzedek area, in reference to the operations of Respondents 4-10 as well as to order them to put in place enhanced means of control and enforcement, and to also Order Respondents 1-3 to use their authority to issue administrative close down and discontinue orders against those businesses that are open after the hour 24:00 and sell alcohol after this hour, and to enforce peremptory rules given for closing those.

The Supreme Court determined that this is about remedies pertaining primarily to the operations of the local authority headed by Respondent 1 (the mayor of Tel Aviv), and also the discretion its exercises, mainly on the subject matter of enforcement of the laws on the licensing of businesses. As is well known, the jurisdiction of the Court in Charge of the Administrative Affairs is not solely limited to the contestation of decision adopted by the local authority, but likewise extends to petitions that are concerned with the local authority’s failure to adopt decisions or omissions it made.
The petition was dismissed due to the existence of an alternative remedy, namely resorting to the Court in Charge of Administrative Affairs.

The Petitioners (who were represented by our office) petitioned for a declaratory relief, pursuant to which they are the owners of the exclusive right of possession of specific areas in the Port of Tel Aviv, as well as for a mandamus directing the respondent (Otzar Mifalei Yam thus administering the compound of the Port of Tel Aviv) to surrender to them the possession of those areas, and this further to contracts concluded between the parties and after the respondent had breached its obligations, based upon the last contract that was concluded between the parties, to surrender to the petitioners the possession of the area which they had voluntarily vacated for purposes of renovating the port.

The Court entertained the petition and determined that Otzar Mifalei Yam breached its obligation to surrender the petitioners the areas concerned.

Likewise, the Court established that even though there was nothing to preclude Otzar Mifalei Yam from filing an evacuation claim against the petitioners, in actual fact it did not do so, bur chose to “get smart” and pulled off an extraordinary “trick of sorts”, as part of which it obtained, in fact by subterfuge and cunning, the areas for purposes of renovation and inhabitance during the authorization period, as it did not make it known to the petitioners that the area would not be given back to them. Otzar Mifalei Yam thus thought that it would be able to stage a complete turnaround, and instead of being the one who has to file the evacuation claim against the petitioners – in effect to force them into commencing the legal confrontation by way of filing a restitution claim.

The Court determined that Otzar Mifalei Yam had blatantly breached its obligation towards the respondents, observing that the government authorities, like any party to a contract, is under the obligation to honor agreements they sign. The authority’s duty to fulfill its obligation and promises is due to the duty of fairness imposed upon it: it is the generality held view that a government authority reneging on its promise (unilaterally) apparently does not act with fairness and reasonableness.

The Court established that, notwithstanding the established ruling mentioned below, in actual practice they were only few cases, in which a public authority was exempted from its contractual obligation based upon the ruling on partners being released from obligations. The guiding rule is that contracts have to be fulfilled, and that becoming exempt from having to fulfill the contract is to be regarded as an exemption, which can be justified only under extraordinary circumstances, in which the performance of the contract is not consistent with the governmental duty. The test in question is the test of vital public needs. When vital public needs are not consistent with the fulfillment of the contract and compliance with its terms – a right thus arises for the authority to become exempt from performing said contract. The authority in question has to point to those needs and their vitality, and merely a vague contention about public needs is not enough. The decision about such exemption makes it necessary to weight and to balance various interests against each other, including the credibility of the government and the interest of the other party to the engagement entered into it. It does not suffice to merely make a vague allegation. Rather, it is necessary to put forward an assessment, to the effect that vital public needs are in contradiction with the contractual obligation assumed by the authority, and that those cannot coexist with the contract. It is an exemption that has to be actually made in rare cases, whereby the authority has to act while having due regard for all the considerations relevant for this matter, in good faith, with the highest value and guiding principles being the need to fulfill contracts.

In this case, the Court determined that Otzar Mifalei Yam did not prove that this was about vital public needs, and no substantial detriment to the public has been proven that would reduce the value of government credibility to the status of a value to be set aside in the circumstances of the matter at hand, hence the contention made Otzar Mifalei Yam about “the ruling on exemption from obligations” was rejected.
The Court determined that there is nothing more just under the circumstances of the matter than to enforce the contract. In the case at hand, the balance of convenience and the general balance of the relevant considerations tip in favor of the petitioners. Under the circumstances of the matter, Otzar Mifalie  Yam was not able to meet the burden of proving that enforcement is not just under the circumstances of the case in question.