Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 207

Summary: - Actions brought by workers pursuant to the provisions of the Labour Law. They shall not be heard, upon denial, after one year from the date of termination of the employment contract, and the provisions of Article 442/2 of the Civil Code apply. The person invoking the bar to hearing the action must swear an oath that he has actually paid the debt to the worker. An heir of the debtor or the legal representative of the debtor or his heirs shall swear that he is unaware of the existence of the debt or knows that it has been discharged. The court may administer the oath of its own motion. Article 144 of Law No. 6 of 2010 concerning Labour in the Private Sector and its Explanatory Memorandum. Rule: Although Article 144 of Law No. 6 of 2010 concerning Labour in the Private Sector means—as disclosed by the Law's Explanatory Memorandum—that actions brought by workers pursuant to the provisions of this Law shall not be heard, upon denial, after one year from the date of termination of the employment contract... and, upon denial, paragraph (2) of Article (442) of the Civil Code applies, whereby the person invoking the bar to hearing the action must swear that he has actually paid the debt to the worker; if he is an heir of the debtor or a legal representative of the debtor or his heirs, he shall swear that he is unaware of the existence of the debt or knows that it has been discharged, and the court shall administer this oath of its own motion; nevertheless, it is established in the jurisprudence of this Court that waiver of prescription of all kinds is a unilateral legal act effected solely by the will of the person waiving it and is not subject to any formal requirement. Just as it may be express, through any expression of intent conveying its meaning, it may also be implied, through the debtor adopting a position necessarily indicating waiver of his right to invoke prescription after that right has accrued. Inference of such implied waiver is a matter exclusively for the trial court, without review by the Court of Cassation, provided that its inference is reasonable and derived from factual indications having an established basis in the papers and negating an intention to invoke it. Accordingly, the challenged judgment based its rejection of the appellant's plea that the respondent's action could not be heard because it was brought more than one year after termination of their employment relationship on its finding that the appellant's representative acknowledged before the expert that the respondent was entitled to wages for April 2010. This constitutes an extrajudicial acknowledgment made by it after completion of the one-year period required to bar the hearing of the action. The court inferred from this that, by this acknowledgment, the company had implicitly waived reliance on the plea barring the hearing of the action after completion of its period and accrual of its right to invoke it, because acknowledgment of part of the right defeats the passage of time founded on denial of that right. Consequently, it cannot be permitted to invoke it anew after relinquishing its right to it. What the judgment stated, within the trial court's power to infer waiver of prescription, was reasonable, had a proper basis in the papers, and could lead to the conclusion it reached without error in applying the law, and addresses the appellant's defence. The challenge to it in this respect is therefore unfounded.