Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 297

Summary: - Pleas have prominent importance in the conduct of litigation. The necessary consequence. Courts must set out a concise summary of them, without restriction by any qualification—unlike the requirement that defenses be substantial—on the legislature's assessment that this quality is present in all pleas. This differs from grounds of defense, some of which may dispense with others, or a response to one of which may imply rejection of the others. The necessary consequence. Judgments must contain an adequate factual response to those pleas and to substantial grounds of defense. Failure to do so. Its effect. Nullity for insufficiency of reasoning. Rule: The provision in Article 116/2 and 3 of the Law of Procedure that "The judgment must also contain a general presentation of the facts of the action, then the litigants' claims and a concise summary of their pleas and substantial defenses and the opinion of the prosecution, after which the grounds of the judgment and its operative part shall be stated. Insufficiency in the factual grounds of the judgment entails the nullity of the judgment" indicates that, in recognition of the great importance of giving reasons for judgments, and to enable the second-instance court to ascertain the soundness of the foundations on which the judgments appealed before it were based, and thereafter the Court of Cassation to review the soundness of the application of the law to the established facts, the legislature required courts to set out in their judgments the pleas advanced by the litigants and the substantial defenses they put forward, so that these may be assessed in light of the true facts of the action, and then to state the reasons justifying the view adopted by the court. The legislature made nullity of the judgment the consequence of insufficiency of factual reasons. Also, in view of the prominent importance of pleas in the conduct of litigation, the legislature devoted Chapter 1 of Title 5 of Book 2 of the Law of Procedure to them, explaining how they are to be invoked and their effects. It therefore required courts to set out a concise summary of them—without restriction by any qualification, unlike the requirement that defenses be substantial—on its assessment that this quality is present in all pleas, unlike grounds of defense, some of which may dispense with others or encompass the adequate factual response to those pleas and to substantial grounds of defense, prescribing nullity as the penalty for their failure in this regard. The documents establish that the appellant, in his capacity, maintained in his statement of appeal that the documents submitted in Action No. 1854 of 2012, Plenary Civil, were not prepared to prove nationality, nor could it be inferred from them that the respondent belonged to the category of persons of undetermined nationality. Had the court been alert to this defense, it could have changed the outcome of the action. The Court of Appeal disregarded examination of this substantial defense with the inquiry it required and affirmed the first-instance judgment on its grounds, which went no further than stating that the judgment issued in the aforementioned action and its appeal, and the documents submitted in that action, established the respondent's entitlement to his claim, without identifying the evidence it derived from that judgment or inferred from those documents and its sufficiency to support conviction in the conclusion it reached. This obscures the basis on which it founded its ruling and prevents this Court from reviewing the correctness of its application of the provisions of the law, thereby vitiating the judgment by invalidating insufficiency of reasoning and requiring its cassation.