Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 247

Summary: - Issuance of a judgment in an action. Its effect: termination of the dispute between the litigants and removal of the case from the court's hands, such that it may not reconsider it in the exercise of its judicial authority or amend or correct its judgment. The exception: purely material clerical or arithmetical errors may be corrected. The nature of these errors: those occurring in expression, not in reasoning, so that they do not affect the substance of the judgment, deprive it of its identity, or sever its connection with the judgment. An example of an error in expression. - Correction of a material error in a judgment. Its procedures. Article 124, Law of Procedure. - The decision correcting a material error in a judgment. Challenging it by the methods of challenge permissible against the judgment being corrected. The condition for this. Rule: It is established in the jurisprudence of this Court that issuance of a judgment entails termination of the dispute between the litigants and removal of the case from the court's hands, such that it may not reconsider it in the exercise of its judicial authority, nor may it amend or correct its judgment therein. This is the general rule. However, for considerations it deemed appropriate, the legislature considered permitting the court, following established practice, to correct purely material errors occurring in its judgment. It provided in Article 124 of the Civil and Commercial Procedure Law that: "The court may, by a decision issued at the request of a litigant or on its own motion, without oral argument, correct purely material clerical or arithmetical errors occurring in its judgment. The court clerk shall make this correction on the original copy of the judgment, and he and the presiding judge shall sign it. The decision ordering correction may be challenged by the methods of challenge permissible against the judgment being corrected, where the appellant maintains that the decision was not confined to correcting purely material errors-." This means that the court's power to correct what occurs in its judgment is confined to purely material errors, namely errors occurring in expression, not in reasoning, such that they do not affect the substance of the judgment, deprive it of its identity, or sever its connection with the correct judgment. The Court's examination of the challenged judgment, p. 19, established that the circuit that issued it (directed its reasoning toward deciding the merits of Appeal No. 771 of 2012, Commercial, but erred in expression by stating, at the beginning of p. 19, Appeal No. 711 of 2012, Commercial, instead of No. 771 of 2012, Commercial. This constitutes a purely material error that may be corrected at a litigant's request and on the own motion of the same court that issued it. This accords with the operative part of the challenged judgment dismissing the appellant's Appeal No. 711 of 2012, Commercial. Accordingly, the ground of challenge is admissible.