"Registrar" – as defined in the law, is a person appointed by the Minister of the Environment from among the Ministry's employees.
- It is therefore unclear what deception or non-disclosure (unproven) was committed against them, in view of the aforementioned sections of the Law, when the reports were submitted to the Registrar by the Respondents. I therefore found that the above arguments should be rejected, in the absence of proof.
(See also section 323 of the Respondents' summaries regarding the alleged violation of the two aforementioned laws).
- In chapter 13 (section 340) of the Applicants' summaries entitled "Consumer Deception, Reliance and Negligent Misrepresentation", the Applicants argued that:
that the respondents did not discover the harmful effect of the polluting substances, did not monitor most of them, and concealed their emission from the residents of the Gulf by ejecting them at night.342.3 Yuval Procaccia and Alon Clement in their article "Reliance, Causal Connection and Damage in Class Actions for Consumer Deception", 37-2014 Law Review, Tax Appeals 7-44 argue, as follows: "A basic principle in the laws of consumer deception, as well as in the laws of fraud and negligent misrepresentation, is that reliance is a condition for the formulation of a cause of action for misrepresentation. Contrary to popular belief, misrepresentation may cause significant damage even in the absence of reliance, and this damage should be compensable. Therefore, the requirement of reliance, which denies the right to sue consumers who did not rely on them, in fact prevents compensation for damage caused by the representation in a causal manner. In addition, it leads to the unjust enrichment of the performer at the expense of his representatives. The requirement of reliance also weakens the deterrent power of the law due to its onerous effect on the consumer class action. In order to meet the requirement of reliance, the representative plaintiff is required to identify and prove which of the consumers were exposed to the representation and which of those who were exposed relied upon. He is often unable to meet this burden. The requirement of reliance therefore leads to the thwarting of many class actions, and consequently to a significant violation of the purpose of deterrence."
- To the best of the test, 'consumer deception' was not claimed by the applicants in the application for approval. This is therefore an expansion of a forbidden front. Moreover, it is not clear what (unproven) consumer-customer-dealer relationship exists in our case between the residents of the Gulf and the respondents (the factories) (see also: section 2 of the Consumer Protection Law, 5741-1981). The court also noted this explicitly in the Strauss case above, holding that:
The relationship between Strauss and the members of the groups in the context at hand is not that of a dealer-customer, nor of any of the other relationships mentioned in the details of the second addendum (insurer-insured; bank-customer; company-holder of securities; employee-employer, etc.) (ibid., paragraph 18).
- It was therefore found that the Applicants' claims that the Respondents "knowingly misled them by emitting hazardous substances beyond the permissible level", and that the Respondents "deliberately deceptively caused air pollution", and concealed "evidence and findings" from the Applicants, remain mere claims, devoid of proof and are liable to be rejected..
- Thus, at the end of the day, the Applicants' claim – merely – that the Respondents did not carry out monitoring of the harmful substances even though they knew they were so, a claim that remained unproven.
- Given the aforesaid, on the verge of conclusion and with the rejection of the claims of deception and non-disclosure, we emphasize that the Applicants have not even proved the cumulative conditions required to prove a claim of deception, such as, for example, the existence of misrepresentation, the existence of damage, and the existence of a causal connection between the alleged tort and the alleged damage.
- At the conclusion of the discussion in this chapter and with a look at the claim of 'infringement of autonomy', see the ruling in Civil Appeal 1519/20 Anonymous v. Reut - Women's Social Service (published in Nevo, August 11, 2020), according to which, inter alia:
I have noted that I am of the opinion that the application of the doctrine of infringement of autonomy should not be extended to injuries or damages that deviate from the definition that was established in the Da'aka case, and which is focused, as stated, on the denial of the plaintiff's right of conscious choice, as a rule, for a breach of the duty of disclosure imposed on any party towards him (ibid., paragraph 3).