Against this background, when an Israeli distributor enters into an agreement with a foreign manufacturer, it is not at all clear that if their relationship reaches a snail, there will be an obligation to clarify the dispute between them thousands of kilometers overseas. It is assumed that a dispute arises between the parties in the amount of ILS 200,000. According to the defendant, would such a dispute also have to be clarified in Britain? This is the result of its position that this is a unique stipulation. However, this will mean that in order to settle this dispute, the parties will need to bear the costs of attorneys and other legal expenses that exceed the entire scope of the debt. Hence, the classification of the stipulation as unique has far-reaching implications for the local distributors of the defendant's products.
The plaintiff argues that these consequences, which will occur if the defendant's position that this is a unique stipulation is accepted, establishes discrimination in the sense of uniform contract law. Indeed, the Supreme Court's ruling takes a strict approach with respect to uniform contracts in which the foreign company dictates that the litigation in their case will take place in the foreign forum (see Civil Appeal Authority 6992/22 AGODA Company Pte. Ltd v. Tzvia (published in the databases [Nevo]; 2024)). However, this refers to contracts between global corporations operating in Israel and between private consumers and small businesses. The plaintiff before us is not one of these. The contract at hand is not a consumer contract.
"In cases where there are significant power gaps that the law seeks to address, the forum can, by means of mandatory mandatory laws, negate the substantive validity of the jurisdiction clause and prevent harm to the weaker party to the transaction" (Avraham-Giller, article, at p. 188).
Indeed, in the circumstances of the present case, there is a power gap between the parties, since the local distributor is dependent on the international manufacturer. Still, these are not so great that it is justified to apply cogent laws here. At the same time, they must be taken into account in the framework of the interpretive process.