the continuation of the process;
- After the court's expert opinion was submitted, on December 30,2025, the plaintiffs filed a motion in which they proposed to advance a procedural arrangement whereby the parties would waive affidavits and evidentiary hearings and move on to summaries on the basis of the expert's opinion. On January 6,2026, the defendants submitted a motion for an amended procedural arrangement, in which they agreed to waive the affidavits of the main witness, but insisted on their right to cross-examine the expert and suggested that after his interrogation as aforesaid, an order would be given regarding the submission of summaries. On January 20,2026, the plaintiffs announced that they agreed to the defendants' proposal for an amended procedural arrangement.
- Subsequently, in the pre-trial hearing of March 17,2026, the procedural arrangement between the parties was given the force of a decision, and it was determined that no dates are required for declaratory interrogations on behalf of the parties. Accordingly, the dates of evidence that had been set in advance for June were canceled, and the court's expert cross-examination was scheduled, which ultimately took place on April 30,2026. I will note that in the course of the hearing, counsel for the plaintiffs chose not to address questions to the expert, so that in practice a cross-examination was conducted only by counsel for the defendants.
- At the end of that testimony, instructions were given regarding the submission of summaries on behalf of the parties. I will note that in their summaries - as will be detailed below, the defendants raised arguments in addition to their appraisal arguments in essence, which were forwarded to the court's expert opinion , including regarding the lack of the privileged majority required by law and the lack of a causal connection to the monetary relief. The plaintiffs petitioned to delete these arguments and claimed that all of the defendants' arguments, apart from the appraisal arguments in their essence, were abandoned in the framework of the procedural arrangement that reduced the dispute to only appraisal questions. In response, the defendants claimed that they had never waived these legal defense arguments. In the decision of July 19,2026, I determined that the decision on the question of the interpretation and scope of the procedural arrangement would be made within the framework of the final judgment.
The parties' arguments;