which are filed against them and the reduction of the nuisance caused to them due to the very need to litigate the issue of immunity where the authority is willing to recognize it. The situation is different in those cases in which an employee of the public authority wishes to recognize his immunity, but the public authority believes that there is no place for this. In such cases, it seems that the burden is on the employee to show that the conditions of immunity are met, in order for the court to be able to make a decision regarding the recognition of his immunity.
- In our case, Adv. Gordon requested that the court recognize her immunity insofar as it relates to the lawsuit that Shai filed against her. The Municipality, for its part, supported the request as detailed in its response, and it appears that the reason why the request to recognize Adv. Gordon's immunity was not submitted in the first place by the Municipality itself lies in the fact that according to Regulation 8 According to the Torts Regulations, the legal advisor of the public authority is the one who must approve the submission of an application on behalf of the authority for recognition of immunity, and since Adv. Gordon serves as the legal advisor of the municipality, but it is clear that she was unable to give such approval because she is the person concerned. Such a possibility, according to which the defendant employee is the legal advisor of the public authority, has no answer in the Ordinance or in the Regulations, and although it appears that these are relatively rare cases, they should not be excluded from the possibility and the present case will prove it. Therefore, it is appropriate that the subordinate legislator give his opinion to this, and at least until he does so, it is appropriate that the issue be regulated in the internal procedures of the relevant government ministries. In this context, we were informed during the hearing that in the meantime, and at least as far as local authorities are concerned, the Ministry of the Interior has indeed established a procedure that stipulates that where a lawsuit is filed against the legal advisor of a local authority, then the authority's position on the issue of immunity will be examined by the legal advisor of another authority. In accordance with the same procedure, we were indeed presented, although only at the stage of the application for leave to appeal, the opinion of Adv. Reshef Chen, the legal advisor of the Haifa Municipality, relating to the issue of Adv. Gordon's immunity, in which the position was presented that the relevant municipality (the Municipality of Upper Nazareth) should support Adv. Gordon's request for recognition of immunity. As noted in paragraph 6 above, a notice was submitted on behalf of Shai in the framework of the application for leave to appeal, to which was attached a letter from the then mayor of Nazareth Illit, Mr. Shimon Gapso, dated January 9, 2012, addressed to Shai's counsel, in which he noted that "the legal department headed by Adv. Olga Gordon did not contact me or the city council with a request for immunity. The agreement you are talking about is not familiar to me