In our case, the aforesaid agreement was not attached to the evidence, and I am prepared to assume that this was done in good faith, due to a procedural error on the part of the plaintiff or his counsel. In any case, these are not circumstances that are beyond the plaintiff's control. However, ignoring this conduct, even if the agreement had been attached to the plaintiff's evidence, it has not been proven that the deceased signed a gift agreement. I will detail below.
- In his affidavit, the plaintiff stated the circumstances of the signing of the agreement as follows:
In order to prove his claim regarding the deceased's signature on the gift agreement, Adv. Shai Cohen was brought to testify. Regarding Attorney Yaron Noah, it was claimed that he was abroad (in Cyprus) and that he was not brought to testify. In the affidavit of Adv. Shai Cohen, he stated as follows:
- In the affidavit of the main witness of Adv. Shai Cohen, he did not explicitly state that the deceased signed before him, but when the affidavit reads it, this fact is dimmed, and it is recorded as if the signature was made in front of him, in light of the plaintiff's declaration that the deceased was signed by the lawyers. However, his cross-examination revealed that Adv. Cohen met with the deceased once jointly with Adv. Yaron Noah, but he claimed that the signing of the gift agreement by the deceased was in another and later meeting, in which only Adv. Yaron Noah was present alone. He also stated that the person who approved the deceased's signature on the gift agreement was Adv. Yaron Noah. It therefore appears that the testimony of Adv. Shai Cohen, like the testimony of the plaintiff, according to which the deceased signed a gift agreement, is hearsay testimony. Moreover, Adv. Shai Cohen did not see fit to disclose already in his affidavit that there were two meetings with the deceased, when in the critical meeting for our case, in which it was claimed that the deceased had signed the gift agreement, he was not present, and it was allegedly held only with Adv. Yaron Noah.
And this is what he testified before Adv. Shai Cohen on page 8: