There is no dispute that the Regulations allow for the termination of the proceeding in such a case, but in the circumstances that have been proven before me, I have not found that the defendant should have assumed that such harm was foreseeable and accordingly he was not legally obligated to order the cessation of the proceedings.
This is the place to clarify that the claims of plaintiff No. 2 that the court that approved the second settlement was misled by the defendant when it ignored the status of the plaintiffs - have nothing to rely on.
As is clear from the minutes of the hearing, in which the court proposed to refer the proceeding to mediation, the court was aware of the existence of an additional claim seeking to bring about the cancellation of the first settlement (p. 2 , lines 2-4 of the minutes of the hearing of March 22, 2011).
Since the court was aware of the existence of the first settlement agreement, it is presumed that it was aware of the identity of the parties to whom this arrangement was applied. Admittedly, the judgment annulling the second judgment cited the plaintiffs' absence from the proceeding as grounds for cancellation, but it was not determined that the mediator misled the court. The court was aware of the existence of a claim prior to the annulment of the first judgment, and therefore it cannot be determined that it was deliberately misled by the mediator.
Has the extent of the damage been proven?
- Even with regard to the extent of the damage, the plaintiffs did not meet the burden imposed on them to prove its scope.
As may be recalled, the plaintiffs submitted an appraisal opinion on behalf of the appraiser Tamar Avraham, which assessed their damages in two cumulative ways: damage to the value of the plots due to a construction delay for six years in the amount of ILS 2,100,000 , and the loss of proper rent in the total amount of ILS 2,736,000 .
In her cross-examination, the appraiser Avraham admitted that "it is possible that there is indeed some duplication" between the two components of the damage, and did not know how to explain why the period of delay examined was actually six years (transcript of July 14, 2025, p. 55, lines 13-14; p. 56, lines 1-4). On the other hand, the appraiser Erez Cohen on behalf of the defendant, in his opinion and testimony, pointed to the duplication in calculating the damage, stating that "the two components overlap and both should not be taken into account in the aggregate" (expert opinion, p. 26, paragraph 13.3).