The plaintiff denied the plaintiff's entitlement to arrears interest as well as the alleged interest rate. According to her, already in 2019, the defendant's CEO responded to the plaintiff's letter and asked for details of the treatment given by the plaintiff. Instead of giving a substantive answer, and detailing the treatment that was performed, the plaintiff waited about a year and a half until the lawsuit was filed. In doing so, it inflated the claim and also demanded arrears interest in the amount of ILS 118,000, which constitutes about 20% of the amount of the claim. This behavior is indicative of bad faith. In addition, the bank has a wide range of arrears interest rates and the plaintiff did not specify the interest rate as claimed by it.
The Procedure
After the statement of claim was filed, the plaintiff filed a motion to amend it, claiming that the calculation, which she presented in the original statement of claim, was incorrect. After accepting the defendant's position, weighing the arguments of the parties, and taking into account the fact that the motion was filed before the first pre-trial meeting was held, I permitted the plaintiff to amend her statement of claim, in order to allow for a hearing of the questions that are really in dispute between the parties (see decision of March 3, 2022). The amended statement of claim was filed on March 8, 2022, after which the defendant filed an amended statement of defense.
The parties submitted lists of witnesses and their evidence.
The plaintiff submitted an affidavit on behalf of Kotler as well as an opinion on behalf of CPA Avraham Alfia (hereinafter: "Alfia CPA"), regarding the rate of saving/reduction in lease fees, which were paid by the defendant to the Tel Aviv Municipality, for the exercise of an option to extend the lease period by 49 years as of September 1, 2010. Accordingly, CPA Alfia was asked to calculate the amount of the plaintiff's salary according to the agreement with the defendant.
The defendant filed affidavits on behalf of Fischer and Adv. Rotem. Affidavits were also submitted on behalf of Mr. Ron Keinan and Mr. David Carmel, who were among the lessees, who joined the group formed under Kotler. At the end of the day, Mr. Keinan's testimony was not heard, and his affidavit does not serve as evidence in the case.