Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 310

Summary: - An administrative action seeking annulment of an administrative decision. The legislature imposed a fixed fee of ten dinars upon it, multiplied according to the number of decisions sought to be annulled. Termination of the action by settlement and the court's ratification of that settlement. Its effect. Refund of half of that fixed fee. Rule: The provision in Article 11 of Decree-Law No. 20 of 1981 establishing a circuit at the Court of First Instance to hear administrative disputes that: "A fixed fee of ten dinars for each application shall be imposed on applications for annulment and stay of execution, and the fee shall be multiplied according to the number of decisions and applications"; and in Article 12 of Law No. 17 of 1973 concerning judicial fees that: "Half of the proportional or fixed fees shall be refunded if the action ends by settlement and the court ratifies that settlement", indicate that the legislature imposed a fixed fee of ten dinars on an action brought before the administrative circuit seeking annulment of an administrative decision, and the fee is multiplied according to the number of decisions sought to be annulled. If the action ends by settlement and the court ratifies that settlement, half of that fixed fee is refunded. It is established—in the jurisprudence of this Court—that a judicial claim, whether an original or incidental claim, must contain an assertion of a right or legal status which the court is requested to adjudicate by virtue of its adjudicative, rather than non-contentious, authority. As for the parties' request to record their agreed settlement or any other agreement in the hearing minutes pursuant to Article 73 of the Procedure Law, it is not considered an amendment of the claims or an incidental claim of the kind provided for in Article 85 of the same Law, because it is confined merely to a request for premature termination of the litigation for a substantive reason, namely settlement or the parties' agreement to end the dispute by mutual consent. The court determines it pursuant to its non-contentious rather than adjudicative authority, owing to the absence of a dispute. In performing this authenticating function, it does not deliver a judgment in the legal sense, but rather ratifies a private agreement, so that the hearing minutes in which the agreement is recorded have the force of an enforceable instrument.