Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 380

Summary: - Grants and bonuses awarded by an employer to a worker in addition to his basic wage. In principle, they are gratuitous. Change in this characterization. Its condition. The employer's undertaking to pay them or an established custom of granting them. Custom is established by the employer's habitual granting of them. Establishment of habitual practice. Its conditions. Generality, continuity, and constancy of value. Rule: It is established in the jurisprudence of this Court that grants and bonuses awarded by an employer to a worker in addition to his basic wage are, in principle, gratuitous payments by the employer which he is not obliged to make. This characterization does not change into an obligation unless the employer undertakes to pay them or a custom of granting them is established. Custom is established by the employer's habitual granting of them, and 3 conditions must be present in that habitual practice: generality, continuity, and constancy of value. Determining the components of wages falls within the authority of the court of merits, without review by the Court of Cassation in that regard, provided that it bases its judgment on sound reasons sufficient to support it. That being so, the challenged judgment based its dismissal of the claim for the annual bonus on what it derived from the report of the expert appointed in the proceedings: that the appellant was not entitled to this bonus because it was not stipulated in the employment contract, and that the appellant acknowledged before the expert that the annual bonus was paid to some workers but not to others, including the appellant, who submitted no evidence of his entitlement to it. Since this conclusion of the judgment was sound, had an established basis in the papers, and fell within the scope of its discretionary authority, the criticism of it on this ground amounts to no more than an argument concerning the discretionary authority of the court of merits, which lies beyond this Court's review, and is therefore inadmissible.