eSignature Legality for Assignment of Partnership Interest in UAE

How to eSign a document: eSignature legality for Assignment of Partnership Interest in UAE

good morning delegates and ruthie rajan deputy editor of the youth legal magazine thank you for joining the ogc talk webinar series this morning our webinar is in association with the law firm psa admit bin hazim and associates and legal research partner lexisnexis the topic this morning is on preparing for litigation a uae codes system guide for those unaccustomed to the uee civil law system litigation can be daunting in this session partner haitim aliyah will guide you through the journey of preparing for litigation in the uae courts examining some of the key aspects such as the steps to take from pre-litigation through the first judgment methods of of objection or appeal the differences between local and federal law how the courts take witness statements and so on our speaker haitan is a partner at the firm he is an accomplished lawyer and legal counselor with over 24 years experience in the middle east as well as being skilled in drafting and reviewing complex commercial documentation he has extensive experience in litigation across a variety of sectors including banking real estate and retail in both a contentious and advisory capacity he is also adept in the enforcement of arbitral awards and foreign judgments within the uae courts he will be assisted by rita ayub rita is an associate within the litigation department of bsa where she regularly assists in major arbitration disputes before the various uae arbitration centers and with commercial disputes before the dubai and abu dhabi quotes haitian will lead the session for the first half and this will be followed by the q a session there is an option on the right side of your panel on both the laptop and the phone to type and send in your queries as it is a session that is scheduled for one hour we request you to send in queries that are relevant to our discussion today over to you hyphen thank you good morning everyone thank you for taking the time to attend this today's webinar and i think i thank our partners lexisnexis on arranging this session the aim of this session is to walk you through uh some of the aspects uh starting by explaining a little bit about the legal system in the uae and then going through with the uh how we do the disputes and the litigations in front of the court some of the differences uh just to give you uh of course a general guide on on this of course some of the topics we cannot uh you know go deeply through because some of the topics are very complex and could take hours to explain so our the webinar of today is going to be more of a general guidance on how to do cases in front of the ua courts what are some different aspects in that regard start with the uae as most of you know consist of seven emirates those emirates they share among themselves what we we know as the federal law of the uae that law which covers all of the seven emirates and then each emirate has its own authority to establish its own laws that's why we differentiate when we say a federal law which applies on all of the uae and a local law which applies only on that emirate in particular for example the real estate law in dubai is different than the real estate law in abu dhabi but when you were talking about for example criminal law criminal law is the same all over because it applies on any act that happens on the soil of the uae that being said having that differentiation between the federal and the local laws of course the constitution of the uae has also allowed the emirates each emirate to have its own judicial system uh currently now we have three emirates that have the full level of courts i'm going to be talking about that which is abu dhabi dubai and russell when they reach a certain level of the dispute in front of their courts they reach 11 where they have to go to the federal courts also we will be talking about that so based on this we can see that the judicial system in the uae since it's made out of federal and local laws so also there will be federal and local courts as well and hence the differentiation between that as i mentioned earlier one is uh if we're talking about a specific topic that's related for example of a real estate matter in dubai that's a that should be in front of the local court whereas the other emirates as i mentioned who do not have the full uh applying the judicial system like as i mentioned like sharjah or ajman or um once they reach a certain level they will have to go to the federal court which is located in seat in abu dhabi which is because it's the capital of the country the ua law the uae laws are coming out of the civil law which anyone who has worked in you know the french system or or has worked in the middle east most of the laws there are coming from the civil background that's why the judicial system here you see that most of the arabic countries maybe with the exception of saudi arabia have very similar levels of the court have very similar processes we're going to be talking about that and of course some of the european countries that still apply the french system which brought in the civil law uh have very similarities to the laws we and to the processes that we have to apply here in the uae uh some of you might be asking about the sharia we all know the uae and its constitution relies on the sharia but of course they apply like i said the civil law and the courts are of civil nature that is the uh formation of the judicial system here and if the constitution of the uae or and and the laws of the uae uh they refer when there is no uh there is no law that can explain a certain matter and if there is no uh precedent or jewish produce to that they can refer back to sharia but since with all of my experience here in the uae i've never seen that because all of the laws of the uae cover almost every aspect and that's why we rely on back of the civil law of course for with the exception of the matters that fall under shariah like for example the family laws or the inheritance family status matters all of those laws will matters will fall under the sharia law of course and it has its own application in that regard the system of the ua courts as i mentioned is of civil nature applying civil law hence we have three different levels of the court starting with the first instance court then going to the appeal court and finishing with the cassation court and i'm sure again a lot of you are familiar with that that's why like i said at the beginning we have the local and the federal okay also we have uh the supreme federal court where some of the matters uh specific matters would be referred to that so uh since they are applying the civil law and we have the three levels of the court any case will be starting with the uh first instance court uh of course i'm gonna be talking how we're gonna prepare for that litigation after i explain a little bit about the three levels of the court uh we start with the first level of the court uh after we receive a judgment we have of course a certain duration and time to appeal it and after the appeal has been issued also we will have to we can go again to the uh cassation court some exceptions here are made relating to some of the claim amounts whereas for example in employment cases if you have a labor dispute or an employee dispute with with the company if that case is below 20 000 dirhams of value it will have no means to to be appealed and that of course of course is made due to the uh small amount of the of the claim and not to be you know like putting a lot of burden on the courts to be again reviewed by a second level of the courts for that small amount as for general cases commercial civil cases other kind of cases if the amount is not above five hundred thousand dirhams there are the amount of the dispute uh it cannot go to the third level of the court which is the cassation court uh so several participants prior to the webinar they sent us some queries and they're not really familiar with the whole litigation process and they asked whether if someone with a little long knowledge and litigation process could you please provide a simple start to finish summary of this of course uh just to guide you through all of that uh if we take an example of a commercial agreement between a company and another supplier for example the supplier supplied some products and he was not paid what does he do firstly we need to always check the agreement that we have between those two parties the party who's wishing to litigate or claim for his unpaid products of course i always advise to seek legal advice go to a lawyer don't rely that you know the law and that you have read and you have dealt with so many businesses and you are able to do that i've seen it a lot i've heard it a lot and then they come back to us and say we did the mistake and please now now help us and sometimes they come at a late stage where the help is not as much as possible if it if they came from the beginning anyways so uh any agreement that is drafted between the parties must include a clear clause that talks about dispute resolution meaning how we resolve if a dispute happened between two parties uh a lot of companies we see it in big contracts here they have several steps they take among the parties prior to reaching the level where they they have no other option but to go to court so uh that's why i was mentioning that we need to review the agreement to see if there are any three steps that needs to be done before we reach the litigation part or before attending to the court and some medical case now this is because of two reasons the first reason of course if you are able to settle it i know lawyers will not like that but then you don't need uh to go to court you will save yourself time and money if of course the settlement is uh fair and illogical uh second reason is that if there are mandatory steps in that dispute resolution clause mentioned in your agreement and if you do not follow it and then you go to court you might get a dismissal of your case based that you submitted your case uh too soon meaning if the agreement that we have talks about uh for example mediation between the parties or settlement uh agreement sorry a settlement stage uh between the parties before we go to litigation then this must happen if we if the agreement talks about that uh a party should be notifying the other party and then he must wait for example 30 days for that party to ratify or fix that issue also if you do not do that that might affect your claim once you go to court so it's very important for us to know what the agreement talks about after that if we skipped all of that or if you have done all of that and we reach a point where the all of those mediation sessions did not proceed well then after of course we we consult a lawyer uh we have to go and prepare for uh the case in front of the court um one of the queries we received is whether the uae law is an amicable settlement friendly country yes the uae always encourages parties to a dispute to try to mediate among themselves and to try to find a good settlement among them on top of that uh we have uh there has been a center established in in dubai which is called the settlement for uh um sorry the center for uh uh disputes settlement but they only made that uh limited to an amounts that are not exceeding two hundred thousand grams as the amount of the dispute also to ease the burden from the from off the shoulders of the courts and not to have the judges and everyone working dealing with cases that can be uh solved uh easily and sorted out easily okay uh also for example if i take the example of employment cases there is a mandatory step where if an employee wants to claim for his employment rights he must go firstly to the labor office or the labor ministry he should file a claim there and that claim uh will be mediated between the company and employee if the labor office failed to mediate among them then the case will be transferred to the court to the labor court of course and as as i mentioned it is a mandatory step meaning if the employee goes directly to the court without passing in this mediation phase at the labor office his case will be dismissed due to lack of a formality that you should have done so to go back to what i was discussing uh we we skipped through the agreement we we saw if there are any three steps that we should be doing mediation meetings legal motors maybe to be sent before we go to court and then we went to court we hired the lawyer of course and we give him all of the documents uh firstly like any other case or any other country that deals with civil uh with civil laws the lawyer cannot present the claimant without a power of attorney that power of attorney should be notarized at the north republic nua to give the authority to that lawyer to represent the claimant and to attend all court hearings and do anything that is in the favor of his client after that of course the lawyer will be gathering the file documents and putting them in his bundle of documents prepare his claim memo and submit to the court the one of the most advanced things that i really appreciate about the uae court system is that now we have everything is done online of course it has been done even before the covet hit but after the covet endemic hit it became a lot and a lot more and so we have an online system where just by sitting in our offices on our laptops we as a law firm we have access to that court system where we can upload the case memo that the lawyer has prepared we can upload the documents that have been gathered by the lawyer and it is sent on the court system one of the amendments of the civil procedural law that tells us how a case is submitted introduced something that we call case management department the role of the case management department is to review what we just uploaded on the court system meaning the claim memo and the bundle of documents that i just mentioned their role is to organize as formalities the uh the process of the file also in a manner to reduce time and to reduce the burden of the shoulders of judges their job is to gather the needed documents the needed memos do the needed notifications to the parties before the file is sent to the judge so we've up we filed this on the the the on the court system it gets reviewed by the case management department and once they have all of the needed formalities they approve for the payment of the court fees they send us a link and that link also we pay the court fees online using the firm's credit card and automatically once the payment has been done to the court fees a notification to the other party to your opponent to the respondent that the claim has been made against you and automatically we will receive from the court system the case number we will receive from the court system the first hearing date and as well all of this will be notified to the opponent to the other party uh after that the case management department starts after the payment has been done after the first hearing is scheduled that first hearing is not with the judge the first hearing is still with the case management department they gather all of the memos all of the defenses that both parties would like to do they submit everything and then at that point when once everything has been submitted then that file is transferred to the concerned judge uh again in a manner to reduce time and to reduce the burden the judge will start looking into the file he will of course conduct hearings also our hearings are being done now again online through the court's online system so the the amazing thing about it is that anyone can attend that even forced some of some amendments to the laws where for example in criminal cases the person should be attending himself in front of the judge uh now he's attending a line so that the judge must accept his attendance online because he is attending so uh we conduct the hearings online uh i can also mention here that sheikh hamad bharasheth ruler of dubai prime minister of the uae uh has announced last week that he is pushing and instructing that 80 percent of litigation hearings continue to be online regardless of the covered because they could see how much that has been easing a lot of the processes for everyone i can also mention here that for example uh if someone is cannot travel to the uae to initiate the power of attorney as i mentioned at the beginning he can now do it online where the notary public will call him on video call to ensure that the power of attorney just to guide you exactly what we do we prepare the power of attorney we apply it also online on the notary public online system uh we send it to our client for him to sign it that attachment we forward it to the notary public then the notary public will assign a time where he will call on video call the client no matter where he is even if he's in the front of uh of the world he will ask him to show either his passport on the camera or his emirates id to ensure that this is the person that is signing on that uh power for tuning and he tells him do you confirm that you're assigning this lawyer to do this and once it's done we receive the power of attorney stamped by the notary to our email as a firm and then we take that and we also apply it to the court so you could see how much this is easing the life of everyone rather than having to travel to the uae to go to another republic to give powerful attorney to the lawyer so this is also done online so uh to go back to the case we attend online hearings with the judge we submit to mamos the judge here will have of course his own discretion and for example deciding to listen to some witnesses maybe to decide to appoint a court expert you know most of the cases need some technical aspects may for example financial engineering mechanical so the court will assign an expert we're going to be talking about more of the role of the experts and the coming slides and that expert will have a certain mission assigned by the court he will meet with both parties he will listen to both of them and he will prepare his report and submit it to the judge uh the judge or the court of course have full discretion asked for the law to take what the expert said or completely uh ignore it because of course the expert's opinion is just of a advisory manner it's not obligatory but we have seen from our experience that 99 of expert reports are accepted by the judge who appointed them and the result of the export report will have of course big effect on the result of the case after that the judgment will be issued by the court that will be the first instance judgment in civil commercial cases we have a time frame of 30 days to appeal that judgment from the date it was issued if the parties were attending meaning what we call here the judgment was issued in presence of the parties if it was issued an absentee against one of them then it is 30 days from the notification to of that party when he was notified of the judgment uh again 30 days same almost similar process we go to the appeal court we file an appeal online we register it gets reviewed by the case management department pay appeal court fees notify the other party and then attend in front of the judge again online hearings until we have a judgment from the appeal court once we have a judgment from the appeal court we still have the right to go to the third and highest and final level of the court which is in court and we have 60 days if you if you notice from the first instance to the appeal we had 30 days now from the appeal to the cassation we have 60 days which is double the time frame uh to go to the cassette court just to mention here that causation courts as we call them are the courts of law meaning they can only look into legal matters they cannot touch the merits of the case okay whether the agreement was done properly or not done properly they considered that as part of the merits which the court of causation will not look into they only look into matter of legalities meaning that the court of appeal worked properly on the file did they miss any any legal step any legal process was there any kind of a request made by one of the parties that the court uh forget to uh to tackle okay uh of course i'm not talking here about the defense that was rejected by the court of appeal i'm talking about a defense or a request that the court of appeal completely disregarded or did not look into uh was the witness uh that well that they listened to at the court why did they uh make him swear uh as per what the law requires that the witness should should be swearing in front of the court so those are the legal uh matters that uh the court of cassation will look into that's why it's called the court of law uh so 60 days to file that appeal the front of the cassettian court of course you don't have to wait till the 60 days end you can do it from the next day but of course if if the file is is ready and uh again online system we file we pay the court fees uh the difference of this court other than it's the court of law is that they they do not have uh hearings meaning the parties will not attend in front of the court of decision unless the court of cassation itself says that i need to listen to both parties but usually they don't see the parties uh the person who filed the appeal in front of the cassette uh will submit his creation memo it will be notified to the other party who has 15 days to respond and after that nothing happens except inside the court of cassation itself where the judges convene in their chambers by themselves and they decide on what to do with the this cassation so that's why it's different from how the first instance where we attend where we submit memos documents witnesses where an expert has been appointed that expert has been uh submitting his report court of appeal very similar to the first instance we attend we submit memos documents everything and also expert report could be appointed as well by the court of appeal again we're going to be discussing more about the experts in the coming slide the court of causation unlike them they don't do that so they decide on the matter among themselves and once that judgment is issued by the court of cassation uh that's it the the case is done if you win you win if you lose you lose there's nothing you can do about it one thing i would like to mention even it's a very like detailed uh matter is that the court of cassation the court of law they have two decisions that they can take one is uh dismissing your cassettian appeal saying there's nothing uh of a legal matter here everything was done properly and your cassettian case has been dismissed meaning whatever judgment has been issued by the court of appeal has now been confirmed that's the first decision they can take the second decision they can take if they find there is a legal mistake or a matter that needs to be reviewed properly what they do is that they send back the file to the court of appeal telling the court of appeal you missed on this point or on this matter you have done something wrongly check check it and then the file will go back to the court of appeal the court of appeal will have a hearing to the both parties and tell them this is what the court of causation has said what is your command and then again there will be a judgment issued by the court of appeal so those are the in general how the steps we usually take when it comes to the three levels of the court um i will be interrupting you to raise some questions that we received because the q and a won't be enough please okay so how long does it typically take for a final judgment to be obtained okay now uh i know a lot of you would have that question how much time it will take uh definitely it it all depends on the complexity of the case we've seen cases finishing in six months we've seen cases finishing in three years so a typical normal case would take between six months to a year passing through the three different levels of the court that's a normal process because we need to take into consideration weekends holidays and the process of the court we need to take into consideration the notification period at the beginning if you're claiming against someone and you're not able to notify you have to try to do whatever you can to notify that party that opponent and that of course will take time so uh all of that will be affecting how long or how short the duration will be okay uh here's another question what is the fastest way to recover the overdue from the customer unwilling to pay the service provider by litigation okay as a law firm we receive a lot of commercial cases people who are owed a certain amount of money companies suppliers developers subcontractors the uae laws have in its in its law something that's called the payment order that payment order is a very fast track process that companies can tackle can use to try to get their money asap through a court order now there are certain conditions to that payment order again we go to a lawyer we do the power of attorney everything i mentioned and the lawyer will submit to the court what we call a payment order that request is submitted without the knowledge of your opponent is not modified until the order is issued by the court now to have that there are specific special strict conditions for it to be considered as a payment order one it has to be a commercial that that between two companies is always considered commercial the amount must be quantified clearly must must be confirmed one million two million five fifty thousand hundred thousand whatever it is and there should be an acknowledgement from your opponent that yes i owe you that money so those three main things are very important to have another formality the payment order requires is that the claimant should have sent before filing the payment order illegal notice and not a rise legal notice meaning legal notice sent by the notary public not the legal to send only by the lawyer it's not enough has to be notarized by illegal by by the notary public and because the notary public are a part of the local courts they have court bailiffs the people who notify so that's why the law has mentioned it has to be an authorized legal warning so i send that legal notarized legal warning to my opponent as per the per the law of the payment order i give him five days if he fails after the five days then i can go to the judge gather my file again make a power of attorney go to the lawyer submit the bundle of documents the same process i mentioned before online registration everything and i give it to the judge the judge in his chamber will review the documents again without notifying the other party once he sees that everything is there he will issue a payment order meaning he will share judgment ordering the other party to pay the amount that you are claiming for once that order has been issued it will be notified to the opponent by law they have 15 days to appeal it and here you can see now there is a difference of the time frame from the normal cases that i spoke about before which was 30 days here in the payment order because it's considered as a special way of of legal process the law specified the appeal of that payment order by 15 days and not 30 days where the opponent can file an appeal on that payment order in front the court of appeal and of course the court of appeal will look into the matter and again they will issue their judgment either by overruling the payment order if it was something wrong or if the opponent maybe has paid or by confirming the payment order and as such the opponent will have them to pay and that order has been confirmed okay [Music] just to note that while i'm discussing because we have received several questions so in order to speak about the litigation process and in order to answer as much possible questions that we have received we are including those questions while i'm i'm speaking one to make it more interactive and second to be able to answer as much queries as much as we have so to go back to the question that lita just asked me uh interim measures the ua courts based on the case itself can undertake different intermeasures intermeasures as we specify it are measures that the court can take immediately to ensure for example the court can have a travel ban issued against your opponent uh i will speak how this is done uh the court could have what we call a precautionary attachment on the assets of your opponent uh why it's precautionary because it is still while the case is ongoing so the judge here will issue a precautionary attachment he will block the assets or the bank accounts and yes unlike some of the countries for example my home country lebanon you can never have a block on a bank account because we have law that called bank secrecy law so bank accounts cannot be touched uh ue unlike my country we can block bank accounts so i can ask the judge to block a bank account of my opponent of course i have i need to have sufficient documents and proofs for the judge see that i have what we call some kind of a confirmed debt for him to either issue a travel ban so my opponent will not run away from the uae and then he disappears and i cannot recover my money back or from him or from my opponent not able to cash out his bank account and then i go after him and his bank account is empty so that's why the judge will issue a precautionary attachment this is only during the course of the case where that bank account is blocked and he cannot touch it or his asset is also blocked and he cannot sell it until we have a final judgment the one that i spoke about before which is the first instance appeal adversation court confirming the judgment and then i can go and enforce my judgment on that bank account or that asset by uh recovering my uh debt from what about yeah measures individually okay yes as i'm mentioned briefly uh also travel ban if i could prove to the judge that there is a risk of my opponent running away especially here in the uae we know that we have over 220 nationalities uh we have a lot of expats living in the country so uh that that expat could just package things and go back to his country and leave and so if i could show the judge uh that there are a big risk of that individual running away he could issue a travel ban against him meaning he cannot travel he will stay in the country until the case ends okay another point we like to i like to talk about uh is that in certain cases uh where for example employment and rental disputes cases uh the courts here tend to ban the manager of the company that you are claiming against uh whose name is on the trade license from leaving the country until the case ends so i'm gonna elaborate more if an if an employee has a case against company x and he took a final judgment for his gratuity and of service rights and then he starts enforcing the judgment and then he finds out that that company has nothing anymore no bank accounts no assets nothing he can head to the judge and the judge could order for a travel ban against the manager of the company the manager we bilo is the one whose name is mentioned on the trade license of the company as the manager the courts here sees that manager knows where the money of the company is and ingly they could ban him from traveling and it can even reach to a point of detaining him meaning the manager of the company even in a case that has a civil nature employment rental he could go to jail detained in jail until this amount has been paid and again we have seen it a lot uh we have seen a lot of people being detained at the airport or banned from traveling because they have an employment case against the company they manage or a rental dispute so also we could see how you know strict the system is in trying to recover the amounts of the employees of the rents whatever so also that's something that and maybe another jurisdiction you don't see it much okay so one last question before we move on to the powerpoint what is the procedure of the lawsuit uh that could be held in the uee on behalf for an entity not residing in the uae okay um this very important question that came that what if a foreign entity that resides outside of the uee has a claim in the uae very simple answer it will be treated as if it's a company that's residing here the law did not limit uh the ability of someone to claim or to litigate on the soil of the e only to companies or individuals that are in the uae no so for example if we have a company in some european country that have supplied some products to a company in the uae and they failed to pay them simply that company that's residing outside of the uae could engage with the lawyer in the ue to file a claim against the other companies so it will be treated in the same manner and in the same way and we should always remember that the uee is is a very much of an investor friendly environment so that's why investors our foreign companies are treated in the same way in the same manner there is no uh separation uh by the laws for uh locals non-locals for foreign companies local companies they are all under uh they are all treated in the same manner under the eyes of the law so they are they are all equal so again that for an entity can only needs to hire a lawyer in the uee who would find a claim against that company and go with the same process that we've mentioned before okay so now moving on to the powerpoint so i mean what about experts is there any requirement for the expert should be registered we've mentioned uh briefly before during the while speaking about the course of action in the case that the court is entitled to appoint a court expert someone who's named as a court expert one should be registered uh and before the ministry of justice uh of course ing to his specifications whether he's an engineer a doctor a mechanical auditor accountant whatever his expertise is he's has to be registered there and that restriction will allow him to be selected by a specific department that is also under the courts of the uae each emirate for example dubai courts they have a department called experts department the judge when he decide on appointing an expert during the course of illegal action for example he needs a financial expert the judge doesn't know who the expert is he just says i appoint or i instruct for the appointment of a financial expert whose job is to review the documents check the audit records check the statement bank accounts whatever this order of the judge goes to the experts department that is part of the courts they select from the schedules that they have the financial expert ing to the expertise that the judge is looking for the judge might need a civil engineer or a mechanical engineer or an electrical engineer so based on the specification that is made by the judge the uh experts department at the court they are the ones who say this file goes to mr x or mr y or mr zed and he will be the one appointed so that's how experts are appointed now experts once they are appointed or selected to that particular case as well the judge in in the appointment decision he will specify expert fees because of course this expert is not going to be working for free uh and he will us and the judge will say who will pay the expertise is it the claimant or the respondent uh once the expert gets paid and receives a copy of the file he will contact both parties he will conduct several meetings with both of them he will ask them for certain uh clarifications documents uh whatever they are saying and then he has even the right to move to the company's offices check their uh check their computers check their ledgers check their bank accounts to initiate and to prepare a full report that he's gonna be submitting to the to the judge why he must be following the steps because if he misses out on what the judge has requested from him it is easily for either parties to the case to uh challenge that report and say that expert did the mistake here or there and that might lead to the uh that the judge might disregard completely that expert choose another one or send to the to the appointed expert tell him you missed out on this and this go and amend that's how expert records are being done are the cost of experts fair and do you agree the cost of the experts are honestly decided by the courts uh recently the um the value of the fees of the experts have been modified and have been increased in order uh in a way that the judge can accommodate the amount of work that the expert has made and of course assign the proper amount of fees to be paid for the expert so i can say now definitely after it has been modified i could say they are fair okay so now moving on to the witnesses okay you all know that in any case you can rely on witness statements those those witnesses uh can be instructed uh either by the judge himself he could say i want to listen to mr x or mr y or the witnesses can be requested to be heard by either party to the case so if i have a number of witnesses that i need the court to listen to i send the request to the court by with the names and contact details of those witnesses it's up to the judge to accept or to deny he could accept all of them to be heard he could deny all of them and if he accepts those witnesses will appear in person in front of the judge uh as i mentioned briefly they have to be taking the oath in front of the judge uh to say the truth and as i mentioned if you remember one of the points i spoke about in the cassation appeal is that if the if the witness did not take the oath that's a legal matter so anyway the expert at the sorry the witness will take the oath in front of the judge and they will give his statements now another way of doing that is that i as a lawyer can take witness statement from someone in case he's not able to attend or for me to know if the judge the judge might not accept to listen to this person so what i do is i take that witness statement to make it official i take him to the to a notary public to have the witness statement authorized in front of the notary public and then i added to my bundle of documents as a proof to what i have so that's if you want a more better or more easier way to have a witness statement done of course it's always in the discretion of the judge to again request that he listens to other made that witness statement or as i mentioned i uh prepare a request send it to the court that i have five ten witnesses i need to the court to listen to uh what also needed to be mentioned here is that with his statements uh or witnesses while they are heard by the court uh we don't have what we call cross-examination uh meaning the i cannot ask directly to the witness a certain question i have to direct my question to the court the judge has a full discretion to accept my question or deny it considering that it's maybe irrelevant and the judge will be asking the witness my question so we don't have the principle of cross-examinations we cannot directly examine the other parties always has to be done by the court by the judge and not by us okay so now with regards to the translation okay the constitution of the uae clearly says that the language of the courts is arabic because we are an arabic country so every document that has to be submitted in my bundle of documents that we submit to the court i must send it to a legal translation office a legal translation office is a is illegal is a translator that again is registered with the ministry of justice also he takes an oath that he's going to be translating fairly and properly and we send our bundle of documents that are in english or any other language and he translated them and he stamps with his official stamp in order for the court to accept the document that's not drafted in arabic if it's in arabic of course i can submit it as is i don't need to have anything to it but if it's in a different language i need the stamp of a legal translation on that document showing the the for example the english document and its translation into arabic other than that we will not be able to have the court review a document unless it's in arabic or translated to arabic okay uh one thing again uh to mention is uh and that's part of the developments that the courts are always doing in the in the uae that abu dhabi courts for example uh obliged uh party to a case for example if if all of his documents are in arabic okay he must translate them to english to allow his opponent if he doesn't speak arabic in order to read what are there so here we see how fair and how uh you know like sophisticated the processes are in the uae where a party to a case who is whose language is not arabic and who's a party to a case must receive the documents in english if they are originally made in arabic the the claimant must translate his documents into english or to whatever language his opponent speaks in order for that opponent to read what those documents talk about so again a very important development in the uae and i really should mention here that we as lawyers we are like learning every single day new things that are being introduced with the legal system here in the ue there are always new developments one of the developments i can tell you about notifications i can notify my opponent through what's up yes by using what's up but of course i have to take the approval of the judge of the court to say i have no other means of doing that the judge would will allow me to send the notification through whatsapp to my opponent take a screenshot and send it back to the judge and he will consider my opponent as being notified not to mention notifying by email notifying in person notifying by record value so you could see how develop the system here as uh with regards to the quality services okay um we spoke about the e-services here of the court and we could see that also the uae uh has introduced the easy signature meaning documents that are that have an electronic signature if they are signed electronically properly they can be accepted as original documents and that document can be uh you know like considered properly in any kind of litigation uh one thing here i would rita is going to be discussing very briefly all of my uh discussion till now i was talking about the local courts of the uae okay the normal litigation process you all know that uae consists of several free zones area we all know that the uae has two financial centers the dubai international financial center and the abu dhabi global market square those two areas have their own laws have their own courts have their own system that is completely separate from the legal system or the judicial system of the uae so my colleague rita will be just passing quickly through them i'm aware of the time here to just take you through and this is completely different from everything i have mentioned before rita please go ahead okay so as has been tackled by some the uae has established several reasons around 45 but what interests us here in this webinar are two of them being the dubai international financial center and the abu dhabi global market the jifc and their adgm so these two free zones they have their own independent judicial system in a nutshell they have their own quarks they are referred to as offshore courts as compared to the onshore courts the uae port they have they are competent to look into civil and commercial disputes not a criminal dispute they operate under the english law system whereas as it's came by haitan the uae courts operate under the civil law system and they have their own rules and legally and regulations the whole are the whole instigation process before the adm and the ifc is different from that of the uae report you won't go into the details as this will take a whole session on its own but these two are competent to look into disputes when the party is expressly referred to a djm or the ifc as a dispute resolution mechanism or for example when one of the parties is a buddy or company that is licensed in the atgm or the ifc the this courts will still be competent to look into this dispute or when the contract has been enquired in part or in whole executed or when a certain transaction has been carried under the edge okay so uh there's also a strong collaboration between the uae authorities the judicial system and the aea and the agm the ifc they entered into protocols and memorandum of understanding in order to regulate such cooperation and to facilitate the enforcement of awards and to make a distinction between the competence of these two so this is a brief about the gift hm now moving on to arbitration i received a lot of question what is arbitration how can someone resort to arbitration and how is it done so in brief arbitration is a distributed resolution mechanism as an alternative to state courts practice can resort to arbitration when they include in their contract and a rotation clause in which they agree that any dispute arising out of the contract the interpretation execution or validity of this contract will be resorted to arbitration um the arbitration plan is really important so we advise uh the practice to always resort to their lawyer and take their advice with regards to arbitration clause in order not to have a defective arbitration clause that would annoy the award at some point and create jurisdictional issues so in this specific orientation clause the parties could tailor the whole habitation process they could agree on the number of arbitrators on the language of the arbitration uh the choice of the law of the procedure the law of the of the substance and the seat of arbitration uh one thing to mention about arbitrators is that the arbitrators should be an odd number usually it's either a sole arbitrator or extreme members tribunal they could also specify the qualities of such arbitrators so for example we can say that you want our aggregator to be an arabic speaker or to have a knowledge in in construction if it's a construction dispute and so on and the agreement of the parties would be binding and even the tribunal and the institution and the whole procedure would abide by the specific orientation clause now as to the types of arbitration we have two types of arbitration there is an adult arbitration and institutional arbitration it's institutional when the parties refer to a specific arbitrary institution in their aggregation clause for example they say whenever a dispute arises out of this contract we would like to have the ifc lcia rules applied this is the example of a reference to an institution whereas when an arbitration is adopt means that the parties will determine all aspects of the arbitration on their own without the need of any arbitrary institution now specifically in the uae we have sorry we have several arbitrary institutions some of them are unsure others are offshore uh we can see onshore we have the dubai international administration center the attack several others and offshore uh the most the bigger two are the galaxy lcia based on the ifc and the atgm based in abu dhabi and recently the icc the international chamber of commerce has established an office in the age of gm so um as a quick move to the whole procedure before arbitrary tribunals it usually starts just like the litigation by the claimant submitting a request for arbitration and then the respondent would submit a request an answer to the request for arbitration and what is interesting here is that the practice could tailor the whole arbitration first has the exchange of memos by virtue of the procedural timetable it's like a timetable they would agree upon how many memos you will be submitting whether we will be including experts reports uh whether we will be including witnesses and the time limits between each uh each memo and when we'll be holding you know the hearing and so on uh for the witnesses they will be submitting here an orientation written statement and same for expert you will be submitting experts reports in support of the claim of the parties and both the witness and the the expert could be cross-examined during the hearing um compared to the uae law the eae court here the tribunal and the opposing council both can cross examine the witness or the the expert during the hearing uh and the the arbitration would end with an award gendered by uh the arbitrary tribunal who has the same effect as a judgment rendered by court it is binding it's final and enforceable uh we would then the the creditor of the award would then resort to the court of appeal to ha to and file an application uh for enforcement the court of appeal would then render an enforcement award an enforcement order and then we can enforce it before the courts of execution just like any other judgement in the uae so this is a nutshell because we're running a bit of time just to add what rita just said is that from the beginning we talked about what you need to to check in in your agreement before you go into litigation because your agreement might be specifying as rita mentioned that there that the dispute resolution clause says that in case of a dispute you go to arbitration under one of the centers that you have that that that you are seeing on the on the slide here so you might not be able to go to the local courts that i talk about you you might need to go to one of those arbitration centers nevertheless after you get a judgment from the arbitration center uh since this is a special kind of dispute resolution uh and since the the arbitration centers they don't have execution and enforcement there is a agreement signed with the uae courts uh where that arbitration award uh goes into a simple legal process with the uae courts the local courts to make it accepted by them and to have it enforced meaning for the judge to be issuing on behalf of the arbitration award attachment or enforcement or whatever the award has been mentioning so you we can see here the big link between the arbitration awards again our arbitration centers that are issuing the awards and the local courts and the uae where because the local courts of the u have their execution hands if you want or enforcement methods and tools so they will apply that on behalf of the arbitration centers uh we're gonna be keeping few minutes for some uh q and a's so uh i know we're gonna be um we already skipped 12 now uh we're gonna wait just couple of minutes i know it's been a short hour i hope we were able to cover some of the main steps and main topics uh for this uh uh for how litigation in front of the arbitration uh and the litigation also uh we're trying uh there is one question that came regarding what measures after covered especially for the tourism and the restaurants that have been affected by complete closure i could answer that quickly by saying that rental dispute committees or the rental court if you want who deals with the dispute of friends have been very lenient towards restaurants or any uh or any entity that works in the tourism field by allowing them to terminate the agreement and leave without paying any penalties or without being responsible to to pay for what might be coming next because we all know you have a rent agreement that has been signed for a year you're liable for to pay for that year if you terminate you'll have a penalty to pay if you terminate before that year so the courts have been lenient by allowing tenants to leave without paying penalties so one of the answer is that the courts are being very lenient when it comes to that especially especially that company or that restaurant must show the court that they really suffered damages they had zero income their statement is zero in order for the court to accept that kind of thing if if it's a different entity that's still working and and generating money of course the court is not going to be accepting so the key point here is to show damages or loss of profit in order for the court to be accepting that okay so we received a lot of questions honestly that i'm not sure you'll be able to tackle one of them is whether uh the concept of good faith play a role uh before you okay uh definitely the concept of uh good faith it's more if you want it's more specific and the common law but definitely any any litigant in any case must be appearing in good faith and because he must be hiding stuff or under his hands and he must be allowing the court or the court appointed expert full access to whatever documents they have so so if if a party uh appears to be in bad faith and the opponent can approve that of course that will have a big effect on that party that he wasn't acting in good faith anything else i actually received a lot a lot of questions i don't know i'm sorry you know like we we received a lot of questions and i'm aware that we've already skipped 10 minutes after 12. i hope we can have another session with our partners the oath uh maybe on different topics or topics of the q and a's that that we are having thank you so much for joining us today we really hope that we were able to deliver this webinar and the right aspect and i wish you all a good day and again much thanks to our partners the oath on on this webinar thank you thank you thank you haitim and rita for the practical insight on this crucial topic our sincere thanks to the firm bsa ahmed bin hazim and associates for leading the discussion gemma bradley at the firm thank you for your support in organizing this session we would also like to thank our legal research partner uh lexisnexis for their support also my colleagues and niche publishers especially to sanjaya the vatican co-organizer of the session a recording of this webinar will be available on the oath magazines website thank you all for joining us this morning thank you especially once again to haitham and rita i wish you all good health and have a wonderful week god bless you