Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 255

Summary: - Transfer of debt. Its effect: transferring the debt from the liability of the original debtor to the liability of the transferee. The consequence thereof. Payment is made by someone other than the debtor. An example of the judgment's correct characterization of the relationship between the litigants and the Credit and Savings Bank as a transfer of debt ineffective against the Bank but effective between its parties, entailing the transferee's obligation to pay. Rule: It is established in the jurisprudence of this Court that a challenge which addresses no part of the ruling of the challenged judgment is inadmissible, and that the court of merits is obliged in every case to give the action its true description and apply its correct legal characterization, without being bound by the parties' characterization of it. In doing so, it is bound only by the facts submitted to it. What matters in characterization is the true intent of the claims therein, not the words in which those claims are framed, and in this characterization it is subject to the supervision of the Court of Cassation. The import of Article 377 and the subsequent articles of the Civil Code is that a transfer of debt entails transferring the debt from the liability of the original debtor to that of the transferee; that is, in this transfer, payment is made by someone other than the debtor. Accordingly, the challenged judgment correctly concluded that the characterization of the relationship between the litigants and the Credit and Savings Bank was a transfer of debt whereby the original debtor (the 2 respondents) and the transferee (the appellant) agreed that the latter would assume repayment of the Bank's debt as part of the price of the property sold. Although that transfer was ineffective against the Bank, it was effective between its parties and entailed the transferee's obligation to pay the debt. Although those reasons of the challenged judgment differed from the conclusion reached by the judgment under appeal, the 2 agreed in their outcome. The appellant's allegation that the judgment under appeal violated Articles 195 and 197 of the Civil Code thus addresses no part of the ruling of the challenged judgment and is therefore inadmissible.