Preliminary Arguments:
- Delay: Regulation 3(b) of the Administrative Courts Regulations states that "a petition shall be filed without delay, in the circumstances of the case, and no later than forty-five days from the date the decision was lawfully published, or from the date the petitioner received notice thereof or from the date the petitioner became aware of it, whichever comes first." Regulation 4 of the Regulations states that "the court may reject a petition if it deems that in the circumstances of the case there was a delay in its filing, even if it was filed within one of the deadlines in accordance with Regulation 3". In other words, the 45-day count under Regulation 3(b) does not exhaust the question of delay, which may exist even when a petition is filed within a shorter time and in circumstances in which it was expected that it would be filed more quickly. When it comes to tender proceedings, and given the possible impact on the tender owner and the winner, the person who wishes to attack the results of the tender is expected to do so quickly. If he does not do so, his petition may be dismissed out of hand due to delay, even if it was filed within a period of time that is not prima facie apparent (Appeal of Petition/Administrative Claim 1456/23 Zvi Ben Eliezer v. MI, paragraph 49 of the judgment of the Honorable Justice Kasher, and the references therein).
- In our case, and as detailed above, a notice of the Petitioner's non-winning bid in the tender was served to her on November 13, 2025. Shortly thereafter, the Petitioner (herself, without representation) applied for documents. From the outset, only the minutes of the tenders committee were requested, and later additional specific documents that the Petitioner mentioned in its applications. The aforementioned documents were provided to the Petitioner by the Council shortly after her requests, the most recent of which was on November 23, 2025. On December 14, 2024, the Petitioner contacted the Council for the first time, through her counsel, complaining about the failure to produce documents and demanding to receive all the documents relating to the manner in which the various proposals were scored. This request was answered by the Council on the same day, when many documents were sent to the Petitioner, some of which had already been invented and some of which were new (the scoring documents given in the application to the recommenders). On December 24, 2025, ten days later, the petition was filed.
- The sequence of events shows that the petition was filed 41 days after the Petitioner was informed of the results of the tender, while in the middle it acted to receive documents from the Council. However, her requests were made in stages, at first she asked for specific documents and after she was answered, she again asked for other documents. A general and broad request in relation to all the tender documents, and in particular the manner in which the bids were ranked therein, was raised by the Petitioner for the first time only in the letter of her counsel. At the end of the day, all the tender documents reached it on December 14, 2025. Even then, the petitioner did not act very quickly and filed the petition ten days later.
- However, I do not believe that in the totality of the circumstances of the case, the aforesaid is sufficient to justify dismissing the petition in limine due to delay. As is well known, the issue of delay as a threshold ground for rejecting a petition is not summarized by the passage of time, but rather consists of it. It includes a combined examination of three different components, while balancing them in the circumstances of the case. One component is a subjective delay, which focuses on the petitioner's conduct and in particular whether it reflects a negligible reflection of his claims. The second is an objective delay, in which the effect of the passage of time on the Authority's situation and the situation of innocent parties who relied on the results of the tender and the damage that may be caused to them is examined, and would have been avoided if the petition had been filed earlier. If these are true, we will examine a third aspect, which concerns the degree of harm to the rule of law if the claim of delay is accepted, and whether this should tip the scales to discuss it on its merits. The decision on the claim of delay is made in each case by balancing these three aspects, and especially between the interests that are considered in the framework of the objective aspect of the delay, and the extent of the harm to the rule of law (High Court of Justice 1758/11 Goren v. Home Center (Do It Yourself) in a Tax Appeal (May 17, 2012), para. 12); (Appeal Petition/Administrative Claim 8968/14 Yitzhak Shitrit v. Municipality of Tiberias (published in the databases) (2017)).
- As to the subjective delay in our case, even though there was indeed room for more expeditious conduct on the part of the Petitioner, I do not believe that her conduct should be regarded as a waiver of her claims. This, given the repeated requests on its behalf to the Council to receive the tender documents, in which it also explicitly requested to delay the realization of the win due to its intention to take legal proceedings in the matter. In any event, as to objective delay, which has the precedence in the overall balance, I am of the opinion that its intensity is not great here. According to the response letters, both at the time of submission of Ron's bid for the tender, on the date of the announcement of its win, and in the period following the filing of the petition, the latter did not have an appropriate qualification approval from the Registrar of Contractors, which is required according to the tender documents as a suspension condition for the Council's engagement with it in the framework of the tender (clause 14 of the tender terms). In any event, it was not possible to engage with Ron Works for the execution of the works, until this matter was settled. Such approval was received by Ron Works only on February 24, 2026, about two months after the petition was filed and shortly after the hearing was held. In these circumstances, a delay in the realization of the results of the tender is not the result of the filing of the petition specifically, but rather due to other circumstances that are not related to it. In this context, Ron Works claims the damage caused to it as a result of the signing of the framework agreement itself (as opposed to an agreement for the execution of specific work) and the provision of a performance guarantee of NIS 50,000 and the approval of insurances as required in the tender, as well as the submission of proposals on its behalf for execution in various localities in the council. However, in the above circumstances, in the absence of an engagement to perform a certain work and to make any preliminary preparations that entail it, this is a relatively focused and limited damage. In addition to the aforesaid, I will add that given the arguments in the petition and the questions it raises on the level of illegality, I am of the opinion that there is justification for discussing them on their merits, even to the extent that I would find that the petition suffers from delay in the aspects noted above. The conclusion is that the claim of delay as a basis for dismissing the petition in limine should be rejected.
- The claim of precluions: Ron Avdot argues that the Petitioner is prevented from claiming the invalidity of an engagement with her in accordance with the provisions of the Regional Councils Order and a conflict of interest, since she did not raise these claims in real time and proceeds to her participation in the tender. In this regard, it refers to the case law according to which a participant in a tender who did not argue against the terms of the tender and its proceedings proceeds to his participation in the tender and to determine the winner thereof, but raised his arguments for the first time only after his bid did not win, will be prevented from doing so in the framework of a petition to attack the result of the tender. In this context, it was argued that the Petitioner had long known about the family connection between one of the owners of Ron Works and an employee of the Council. I do not consider this argument to be accepted in our case, for the following reasons.
- First, I am not persuaded by the basis before me that the Petitioner was aware of the family connection in question prior tothe decision in the tender. According to the Petitioner in her petition, she became aware of this fact only after she was informed of the result of the tender, which she reiterated in the hearing before me. Ron Works' claim that this was known to the Petitioner from the outset was raised without concretely stating that information of this kind was given to the Petitioner at some point by someone on behalf of Ron Works or by another party. It is not superfluous to note that this is information regarding the personal status of a shareholder in the company, a private data that there is no reason to assume that it is accessible to everyone, not even to anyone who conducts business in a similar field. The fact that the claim was not raised by the Petitioner in its applications to the Council immediately after the announcement of the results of the tender is logically consistent with its claim for late disclosure in this matter. I will add that the affidavit in support of the petition is indeed drafted to the best of my knowledge in relation to this point, which was explained by the Petitioner's counsel as a fault on his part, but in the overall picture I do not believe that this is sufficient to tip the scales to determine that the Petitioner knew about the identity of the spouse of one of the owners of Ron Works.
- Second, the Petitioner's argument in essence is to disqualify works in Ron's proposal, due to the prohibition set forth in section 59 of the Regional Councils Order. In view of the aforementioned prohibition, the bidders were required in the tender documents to attach to their bid an affidavit regarding the lack of family relationship to the employee among the council's employees (Appendix H to the tender documents). I will address the affidavit that was submitted). In accordance with the ruling, a distinction must be made between the duty of a participant in a tender to advance and raise before the tender owner his arguments against the terms of the tender or a defect in the tender process, and raising a claim of a defect in the proposal of one of the participants. With regard to the second type of cases, it was ruled that a participant in a tender is not obligated to warn the tenders committee about a defect in his competitor's proposal, even if he is aware of its existence. In this regard, it was held that: "In general, good faith does not require that a participant who believes that there has been a defect in another participant's bid to notify the tender owner. Each participant is entitled to rely on the fact that the tender proceedings will be conducted lawfully, and that the tender owner will take the required steps towards a proposal that does not meet the terms of the tender. It is not at all desirable to impose on participants in a tender a duty of mutual 'supervision' over the competence and ability of other participants" (Civil Appeal 4683/97 Knowledge of Computers and Software in Tax Appeal v. State of Israel et al., IsrSC 51(5) 643, 646, in the judgment of the Honorable President Barak; see also: Administrative Petition 1966/02 Majar Local Council v. Jamal Ibrahim et al., IsrSC 57(3) 505, 516). Given the aforesaid, and in view of the focus of the argument in our case, it is doubtful whether the Petitioner was obligated to make an initial application to the tenders committee regarding the family connection of one of the owners of Ron Works to the Council employee, to the extent that it knew about her. As stated above, the issue of kinship to any of the council's employees was anchored in the tender documents themselves, which require the tender participants to attach to their bid an affidavit of lack of family relationship. The tender participants could therefore have assumed that the issue of kinship to any of the council's employees would be discovered in the framework of the bidders' proposals in the tender and would be properly examined by the tenders committee.
- The claim of non-exhaustion of proceedings: Ron Avodot argues that the petition should be dismissed out of hand even due to non-exhaustion of proceedings, since the Petitioner did not raise its arguments as detailed in the petition before the tenders committee after receiving the notice of non-award and prior to the filing of the petition. This argument also does not justify dismissing the petition in limine. It should be noted that the Council itself, i.e., the administrative body with which proceedings should be exhausted, did not raise this argument as a reason for rejecting the petition, but rather it was heard by Ron Works. In these circumstances, it is doubtful whether it should be addressed. In any event, in its applications to the tenders committee after receiving the notice of the results of the tender, in which documents were requested, the Petitioner did not indeed raise its arguments detailed in the petition regarding the provisions of the Regional Councils Order and a conflict of interest. However, as detailed above, this is a fact that she claims became aware of only at a later stage. In view of this, and given the time that has passed since the announcement of the results of the tender, with its possible implications for all concerned, it seems that raising the argument in the petition without contacting the tenders committee for a further request, is not unreasonable under the concrete circumstances. As stated, the Council does not explicitly claim otherwise.
00The petition on its merits: