And later on:
The witness, Mr. Zafarani: I have not been exposed to any partnership document or any agreement of any kind that indicates that they are partners, I know that,
The Honorable Judge Shaked: And did you understand that they are not partners or are they partners? What was your understanding?
The witness, Mr. Zafarani: I didn't deal with it.
The Honorable Judge Shaked: So that is, what is written in section 3 is not true, and also what is written in section 5 regarding the partnership in the Hasson Gesher corporation.
The witness, Mr. Zafarani: No, so what is written in section 5 means that as far as I'm concerned, Adi and Toby were partners..."
(p. 66 of the transcript, paras. 3-9).
- Timur's testimony: This witness also claimed in his affidavit that the plaintiff and defendant 1 were partners who operated through companies. His affidavit also contains concrete indications that support this.
- Dovrat's testimony: This witness also described regular conduct of mutual withdrawals and explained that this was due to the fact that "they are partners" (p. 207 of the transcript, paras. 23-26).
Equal withdrawals are not necessarily an indication of a partnership. Moreover, even unequal withdrawals do not rule out the existence of a partnership, since it is possible that the holding in the partnership is not equal, which is a very common case, such as in lawyers' partnerships. Moreover, even in a company held in equal shares, which is not claimed to be a partnership, the shareholders often draw equal withdrawals that reflect the distribution of shares in the company.
- The plaintiff sought to rely on the testimonies of Attorneys Paran, Timur, Harush and Dovrat in order to prove that the parties were presented to the public as partners (paragraph 45 of his summaries). I cannot accept this argument, which is within the scope of the applicant's assumption.
These witnesses, as stated, testified to their subjective impression. None of them presented in their testimony evidence of an explicit statement, or at least any real-time messages, on behalf of any of the parties (not even on behalf of the plaintiff unilaterally), that they see themselves as partners.
- In conclusion, I will refer to a number of additional arguments raised by the plaintiff:
- The plaintiff claimed that counsel for defendant 1 themselves admitted to the existence of a partnership between the parties in paragraph 3 of their letter of July 28, 2019 (Appendix 13 to the statement of claim to which the plaintiff referred in paragraph 86 of his affidavit), in response to the plaintiff's letter of demand for accountability, in which the parties were described as "business partners". This letter raises a reference to the corporate structure of companies: so, in section 3 of it, which states that the parties control "a number of corporations", and so in section 10 of it, which states that the plaintiff and Tov Gal are entitled to apply to companies in which they hold shares. And not only that, this letter was sent in response to the letter of the plaintiff and Tov Gal (Appendix 11 to the affidavit of defendant 1) in which it was claimed that Tov Gal is part of the partnership, while the plaintiff, as stated, claims the opposite about it.
In view of the above, it is clear that the words "business partners" should not be equated with any more than a way of expressing the common economic interests of the parties. The plaintiff himself argued in his summaries (paragraph 43) that "the legal basis of a partnership relationship was made detached from the declarations of the parties in this matter", relying on the Gilboa case, according to which these declarations cannot have a constitutional significance but at most evidentiary significance.