Khaberni - The Dubai Primary Civil Court has ordered an Asian person to pay two men of the same nationality an amount of three million and one hundred and fifty thousand dirhams, and legal interest at the rate of 5% from the date the judgment becomes final until full payment, after it was proven that he had taken possession of 15 kilograms of 24-carat gold owned by them.
The case details stated that the plaintiffs filed a complaint against the accused, who was referred by the public prosecution to the court on charges of embezzling funds entrusted to him, damaging the rightful owners thereof. The Criminal Court sentenced him to six months in prison and fined him 3.5 million dirhams for the amount that could not be seized, in addition to deportation from the country. The judgment was upheld in appeal and cassation and became final.
The Civil Court, in the reasons for its judgment, stated that liability for harmful action requires the presence of three elements: mistake, damage, and causal relation, as established by Article 282 of the Civil Transactions Law, which defines harmful action as exceeding the permissible limits or falling short of the required standards, whether the action is active or passive, intentional or negligent.
It explained that the burden of proving the elements of tortious liability rests on the victim, but the judgment issued in the criminal case is binding before the Civil Court in terms of the act that forms the common basis between the two cases, its legal description, and the attribution to its perpetrator, as per Articles 269 of the Criminal Procedures Law and 50 of the Evidence Law, and based on the established case law of the Dubai Court of Cassation.
It added that the final criminal judgment convicting the defendant of taking possession of 15 kilograms of 24-carat gold valued at 3.5 million dirhams, holds evidential weight before it, thereby precluding the re-examination of the issue of fault or its attribution, and must be complied with.
It noted that the defendant's taking possession of the gold resulted in the plaintiffs losing the value of the money and the benefit and investment from it since the date of the incident, as well as moral damage represented in the infringement upon their ownership and the necessity for them to pursue legal proceedings to recover their rights.
It confirmed that assessing the elements of damage and the amount of compensation are issues of fact that are independently determined by the court of first instance, without the need to follow a specific quantitative standard, provided that its ruling is based on reasonable grounds derived from the documents, and it ordered a total compensation of three million and one hundred and fifty thousand dirhams.
Regarding the interest request, the court clarified that delay interests are considered compensation for the damage caused by delayed fulfillment, and the judicial custom has settled on calculating them at an annual rate of 5%, and it ruled for them from the date the judgment becomes final until the completion of the payment, and obliged the defendant to pay the fees, expenses, and attorney's fees.
