C1. The law of the claim in the act of the court in respect of the previous proceeding, to be dismissed
- There is no dispute that when the previous proceeding was opened, the defendants had not yet signed the affidavit of solvency.
- There is also no dispute that in the summaries submitted by the plaintiff in the previous proceeding (paragraphs 55-57 of the summaries), he wrote that the defendants signed affidavits of solvency and the company moved to the status of voluntary liquidation, and to the extent that it became clear that there were still debts and obligations of the company, the shareholders and managers who made a declaration would bear them.
The defendants claim that the fact that the plaintiff raised this in his summaries in the previous proceeding, and yet the court there dismissed the claim against the defendants, and only ordered the company to pay the plaintiff, shows that this argument was rejected, in practice, in the judgment in the previous proceeding, and the plaintiff is prevented from raising it in the proceeding before me. I did not find any substance in this claim.
- The doctrine of "act of court" is intended to ensure the finality of the hearing and is based on the principle that prevents further litigation in a matter that has already been discussed and decided between those parties in the framework of a judgment that has been given. This doctrine is constructed of "estoppel of cause" and "estoppel of company."
The rationale of this doctrine lies in the interest of preventing a party from being harassed to litigate again on a matter that has already been heard and decided, or that the party has been given an opportunity to present it for hearing and a decision in the framework of the first action, as well as in the public interest to prevent an overload on the judicial system in litigating matters that have already been heard (CA 2360/99 Bahar v. Housing, Building and Development Ltd., IsrSC 55(4), 18, at p. 24).
Estoppel of cause of action applies where the claim has been heard on its merits and decided by an authorized court, in which case there is no need for an additional claim between the same parties or their substitutes, which is based on the same cause. The test for identifying the cause of action in this matter is broad, and the rule of court action applies even if the later claim included details that were not included in the previous claim, even though they existed at the time it was filed (CA 246/66 Kluzhner v. Shimoni, IsrSC 22 (2) 561 (hereinafter: "the Shimoni case"), at pp. 582-583, 592).