Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 520

Summary: - Administrative disputes provided for by law. The Administrative Circuit of the Court of First Instance has exclusive jurisdiction to hear them. The time limits and procedures before it differ from those prescribed for other actions falling within the jurisdiction of circuits of general jurisdiction. - The legislature’s treatment of the administrative authority’s refusal to take a decision which laws or regulations require it to take as an administrative decision. Its effect. The plaintiff’s formulation of his claims in terms involving annulment of the negative decision refusing to issue a birth certificate and a civil identity card for his son falls within the jurisdiction of the Administrative Circuit of the Court of First Instance. The challenged judgment’s departure from that position and its determination of the merits of the action. This vitiates it and requires its cassation. Rule: It is established in the case law of this Court that the effect of Articles 1, 2, 5, 10, 11, 12 and 13 of Law No. 20 of 1981 Establishing a Circuit at the Court of First Instance to Hear Administrative Disputes is that the legislature established that circuit and vested it exclusively with jurisdiction to hear the administrative disputes provided for in those articles. The legislature took care to assign that circuit a special system for preparing actions before their submission to it, and the subsequent special procedures for scheduling hearings and notifying litigants. It specified a particular threshold for appealing its judgments and designated a special circuit at the Court of Appeal to hear the appeal after its preparation. It required service of the statement of claim and the appeal within the 3 days following the filing of the statement, and imposed a fixed fee on some of these actions. It is apparent from this that those time limits and procedures differ from those prescribed for other actions falling within the jurisdiction of circuits of general jurisdiction. It is also established that the meaning of Articles 1 and 4 of the aforementioned Decree-Law No. 20 of 1981 indicates that the legislature treated the administrative authority’s refusal to take a decision required by law or regulation as an administrative decision. That being so, and as it is apparent from the papers that the first respondent’s claims in the action entail a demand to annul the administration’s negative administrative decision refusing to issue a birth certificate and a civil identity card for his son, which falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Administrative Circuit of the Court of First Instance to hear and determine, and as the challenged judgment departed from this position, rejected the plea raised by the appellants in this regard, and determined the merits of the action despite lacking jurisdiction to hear it, it is vitiated in a manner requiring its cassation, without any need to examine the second limb of the ground of appeal.