Civil Appeal Authority 775/11 Adv. Olga Gordon v. Estate of the late David Shai et al.
- The applicant in this application is Adv. Olga Gordon (hereinafter: Adv. Gordon) which serves as the legal advisor of the Municipality of Upper Nazareth (hereinafter: Municipality). On March 19, 2009, Respondent 3 (hereinafter: Shay), a resident of Nazareth Illit, filed a lawsuit in the Magistrate's Court in Nazareth against Adv. Gordon and against the Municipality, in which she claimed that after
After a verbal argument between her and Adv. Gordon in the elevator of the Small Claims Court in Nazareth, Adv. Gordon informed her that she would "hear from her." Since then, according to Shai, Adv. Gordon has used her governmental power as the municipality's legal advisor and has taken various legal proceedings against her as detailed in the lawsuit. According to Shai, these were proceedings taken unlawfully in which the municipality demanded excessive and retroactive municipal property tax payments from her, deprived her of exemptions from municipal taxes to which she was entitled by law, and also took collection and foreclosure proceedings against her due to municipal property tax and water debts, even though the debts were paid and in contravention of an injunction issued by the court. According to the statement of claim, Adv. Gordon was the one behind all these legal proceedings, which were filed for irrelevant considerations and in a serious deviation from the proper conduct of a public servant. Due to fee considerations, according to the lawsuit, Shai reduced the amount of compensation she demanded from the municipality and Attorney Gordon to a total of ILS 300,000.
- Adv. Gordon appealed to the Magistrate's Court to recognize her immunity as a public servant and to dismiss out of hand the lawsuit if it was directed against her personally. The municipality, which was represented in the lawsuit by Adv. Ohad Eliaz (hereinafter: Adv. Eliaz) from the Municipality's Legal Counsel Department (which was managed by Adv. Gordon), informed the court that it supported the request and that in its view, Adv. Gordon acted in good faith and within the framework of her role as the Municipality's legal advisor. The Magistrate's Court (the Honorable Judge S. Sarhan) rejected the request for recognition of immunity and ruled that the claims made in the statement of claim ostensibly give rise to a personal cause of action against Adv. Gordon, and therefore there is no reason to dismiss the claim out of hand. The Magistrate's Court added that if it turns out at the end of the proceeding that there was no room for Adv. Gordon to join as a defendant, it will be able to find its remedy for this in an expenses ruling.
On this decision, Adv. Gordon filed a request for leave to appeal to the District Court (the Honorable Judge A. Avraham), which rejected the request without requesting the respondents' response, ruling that according to the facts alleged in the statement of claim, the conditions of the exception to immunity are met, and therefore there is no reason to dismiss the claim against Adv. Gordon out of hand. Adv. Gordon did not accept this decision of the District Court, and hence the application for leave to appeal before us.