And so it happens that members of purchasing groups - in their hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands - remain vulnerable and subject to the care and supervision of the organizers of the groups, and the various service providers. As long as the journey ends successfully and the group members reach the coveted goal of constructing the residential buildings and distributing the apartments, it is a blessing for all. But what if the projects find themselves in tension and crisis? How should the interests of the group organizers on the one hand and their members on the other be balanced?
The magnitude of the risk makes it impossible to wait for the legislative arrangement, in whicha will come at some point or another. The courts must already take active steps to contribute to the proper handling of the interests and harms on the agenda. The way to do this is by applying the laws of trust to the matter of the purchasing groups. I addressed this in an opening motion (Tel Aviv District) 39815-06-16 Mark et al. v. Adv. Hagag (published in the Databases [Nevo]; 2018) (hereinafter: the Mark case), and more generally more recently in Civil Case 35652-02-22 Ohayon v. Eilam - Israeli Association for Musicians' Rights (published in the Databases [Nevo]; 2025), and for the sake of convenience I will repeat the main points now.
Trust Laws and Purchasing Groups - Required Conformity
- As is well known, it is difficult to translate the English legal term fiduciary into Hebrew, and important in this regard is Amir Licht's suggestion to use the term "fiduciary" (Amir Licht, The Law of Trust - The Duty of Trust in a Corporation and the General Law 1 (2013) (hereinafter: Licht)), which I will adopt here. In any event, "imposing a duty of trust on a certain person towards an anonymous person makes a fiduciary of an anonymous person" (Amir Licht, "Duty of Trust - When?" Duties of Trust in Israeli Law 35, 36 (Ruth Plato-Shinar and Yehoshua (Shuki) Segev eds., 2016) (hereinafter: Licht article)).
00 Israeli law recognizes the power of Israeli common law to recognize relationships as imposing fiduciary duties on one of the parties, even when these are not defined in the Freedom Law. As the Honorable Justice noted, as he was described at the time, Barak, in one of the cases "The law recognizes that in certain cases a person is in a state of trust (loyalty) towards one another. This is the law in the relationship between an agent and his sender, between a manager and the corporation, between a trustee and a trustee. The list of these situations is not exhaustive, and it 'exists in a wide variety of legal relationships' [...]. It seems to me that what these situations have in common is that in the hands of one person the interest of another has been entrusted, the operation of which he is entrusted with [...]. There is a concern that unsupervised and restraint power will lead to the abuse of that power. The purpose of the Rules of Trust is, inter alia, to create supervision and to impose restraint on the holder of power in the exercise of power" (High Court of Justice 531/79 The Likud faction in the Petah Tikva Municipality v. Petah Tikva Municipal CouncilIsrSC 34(2) 566, 570 (1980)). And indeed to the list, that is not closed, More New Areas In which Familiarity Duties of trust through case law.