Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 8

Summary: - Pleas have prominent importance in the conduct of litigation. Necessary consequence: courts must include a brief summary of them without qualification by any description—unlike defences, which are described as having to be material—the legislature deeming that description fulfilled in all pleas. This differs from arguments of defence, some of which may render others unnecessary, or a response to one of which may imply rejection of the others. Necessary consequence: judgments must contain a sufficient factual response to those pleas and to material arguments of defence. Consequence of omission: invalidity for inadequate reasoning. Rule: Article 116/2 and 3 of the Code of Procedure provides: "The judgment must also include a general account of the facts of the case, followed by the parties’ claims, a brief summary of their pleas and material defences, and the opinion of the Public Prosecution; the reasons for the judgment and its operative part shall then be stated; and inadequacy in the judgment’s factual reasons shall entail its invalidity." This indicates that, in recognition of the great importance of giving reasons for judgments, and to enable the second-instance court to ascertain the correctness of the foundations on which judgments appealed before it were based, and thereafter the Court of Cassation to review the proper application of the law to the established facts, the legislature required courts to include in their judgments the pleas raised by the parties and the material defences they advanced, so that both may be assessed in light of the correct facts of the case, and then to state the reasons justifying the view adopted by the court. The legislature made inadequacy of factual reasons entail invalidity of the judgment. Moreover, because of the prominent importance of pleas in the conduct of litigation, the legislature devoted Chapter One of Part Five of Book Two of the Code of Procedure to them, explaining how they are to be invoked and their effects. It therefore required courts to include a brief summary of them—without qualification by any description—unlike defences, which are described as having to be material, deeming this description fulfilled in all pleas, unlike arguments of defence, some of which may render others unnecessary, or contain the sufficient factual response to those pleas and to material arguments of defence, prescribing invalidity as a sanction for failure in that respect. The papers establish that the appellant, in his capacity, maintained in his notice of appeal that the documents submitted in Case No. 1854 of 2012, Plenary Civil, were not prepared to prove nationality and did not establish that the respondent belonged to the category of persons of undetermined nationality. Had the court appreciated this defence, it could have changed the outcome of the case. The Court of Appeal disregarded examination of this material defence as required and upheld the first-instance judgment on its reasons, which went no further than stating that the judgment in the aforementioned case and its appeal, and the documents submitted in that case, established the respondent’s entitlement to his request, 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 of its ruling and prevents this Court from reviewing the correctness of its application of the law, vitiating the judgment with invalidating inadequacy and requiring its quashing.