Tag: Case and Fatwa Summary

The Supreme Court held that a group life insurance clause requiring an employee to be “actually at work” on the policy commencement date is directed at employees on ordinary leave, not at employees prevented from attending work by a sudden accident. An employee who died on the morning the policy came into force, following a domestic gas explosion days earlier, was legally deemed to be at work and covered.

The Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs held that the confiscation of a performance bond is a contractual penalty that may only be imposed where a law, regulation, or the contract expressly provides for it. Neither the Tender Law nor the 1999 Standard Contract for the Construction of Buildings and Civil Works permits a government entity to confiscate a contractor's performance bond when it withdraws the works and executes them at the contractor's expense. Once the entity has recovered its price differences, delay fines, and expenses from the contractor, the 1999 Standard Contract requires it to return the bond.

The Supreme Court held that a party harmed by the non-performance of a contract cannot claim both rescission of the contract and payment of the contract price, even in separate proceedings, because paragraph 1 of article 172 of the Civil Transactions Law prohibits combining the two remedies, and doing so would result in one party being enriched at the expense of the other.

The Supreme Court held that when a lawyer files a contestation on behalf of a company, the power of attorney must come from the chairman of the board of directors. If it was instead signed by someone else, such as a board member, the lawyer must also attach the document in which the chairman delegated that person the authority to appoint a lawyer. Without it, the contestation is inadmissible.

The Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs (MJLA) held that a contractor does not have the right to a variation order to obtain compensation from the Ministry of Transport, Communications, and Information Technology (MTCIT) for VAT paid in connection with a contract that was signed before the issue of the Value Added Tax Law.

The Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs (MJLA) confirmed that the only government entity with the power to make an exemption from the payment of any royalty or fee due to the government is the Ministry of Finance. Ministries directly interfacing with contractors are not permitted to make exemptions from the payments of amounts due to the government, even for their own projects. This fatwa also highlights the risks that contractors face when relying on incorrect information formally communicated by government entities.

The Supreme Court terminated a criminal lawsuit against an Omani man for marrying a non-Omani without a permit because of a change in legislation.

The Supreme Court confirmed that a PhD thesis is protected by copyright and that the the signing of research agreement for a component of the research between the PhD researcher and the university does not make the PhD thesis the property of the university.

The Supreme Court held that an engineer is not considered grossly negligent for supervising the construction of a wall built using a defective design created by the owner.

In a contract that was signed before the entry into force of the Value Added Tax Law, the Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs (MJLA) held that a contractor was required to pay VAT out of the contract value agreed with the Ministry of Health and that contractor had no basis for adding it as additional charge that the ministry owes to the contractor.