An Agreed Motion to Postpone the Date for the Submission of Evidence, which was Rejected by the Court of First Instance
- As part of the hearing of the appeal, a procedural argument was raised related to the replacement of the appellants' representation in the preliminary proceeding and the request to submit amended affidavits of the main witness, which followed the change of representatives. This motion was filed by counsel for the appellants after they had replaced their predecessors, and in the framework of it, the trial court was asked to change the date of proof that had been set earlier. The Tax Authority, in its great courtesy, agreed to this request, but the court rejected the request - despite the agreement of the parties - because this is an old case and also due to the postponement of hearings approved by it in the past in order to allow the parties to submit affidavits of the main witness and prepare for the evidence. The group attacks this decision in the appeal before us, along with legal arguments that were heard from it in the framework of the appeal.
- After deliberations, and in view of the legal result that I reached in the matter of the beneficiary settlement benefit and the expenses incurred by the team on the formation of the team's players, I have reached the conclusion that we must reject this claim.
- In this context, I will first note the obvious: the postponement of dates set by the trial court in order to advance the resolution of the disputes in the framework of the proceeding that is being conducted before it is at its discretion. This is a broad discretion, in which we are unable to intervene whenever it is exercised for practical reasons (see: Civil Appeal Authority 6827/98 Kinneret Quarries v. Local Planning and Building Committee, para. 3 [published in Nevo] (July 14, 1999); Civil Appeals Authority 5899/03 Naor v. Kfar Saba Assessor, para. 3 [published in Nevo] (March 14, 2004); Civil Appeal Authority 8722/03 Vulkan Batteries in Tax Appeal v. Customs Administration, Purchase Tax and Tax Appeal Haifa, IsrSC 59(1) 769, 774 (2004); Civil Appeal 607/70 Electronic Appliances Corporation, Jordan v. Gratz Parterbassgazslat, IsrSC 25(2) 441, 443 (1971)) - as happened in the present case. The parties' agreement to postpone such dates is indeed a consideration that supports granting the request for adjournment, but it is not a decisive consideration (see: Civil Appeals Authority 425/98 Naki v. Porush, para. 3 (January 29, 1998); Civil Appeal Authority 3136/00 Salman v. Shukair, IsrSC 55(2) 97, 101 (2000)). At the end of the day, the trial court is the one that manages its diary with its public duty to provide fair and efficient legal service to all litigants, and not only to the litigants before it (see: Civil Appeals Authority 8327/05 Tzadik v. Internal, para. 4 and the references there [published in Nevo] (14.9.2005)). For these reasons, I have already had the opportunity to comment that "a civil procedure is not a 'plan as you request'" (see: Civil Appeal 5400/18 Mir v. Meron, paragraph 1 of my judgment [published in Nevo] (28.1.2019)). To this, I will add that the request for postponement had no justification in the context of funding provided by the Kiryat Shmona Municipality to provide its players with nutrition, mobile phones and team-building events. These are fairly simple issues and a well-known and plowed legal field along and wide. The representatives of the group were therefore able to prepare the necessary affidavits and documentation without any difficulty within the time allotted to them by the trial court.
- As for eligibility for a beneficiary settlement benefit and with regard to the financing of housing and accommodation in Kiryat Shmona, which the team granted to its players - these issues raised more complex questions that have not yet been decided in our rulings in the context of professional sports in general and professional football in particular. For this reason, it may have been appropriate to grant the request for adjournment in the context of these two issues in order to enable the group to lay a broader factual foundation than that which was before the trial court.
In this context, we must remember the words of the judge M. Landau Because -