A “false oath” obliges the owner of a construction company to compensate 410,000 dirhams

A contracting company filed a lawsuit demanding that the owner of a construction company pay an amount of 444 thousand dirhams, in compensation for material and moral damages suffered by the first company (the complainant), as a result of the owner of the latter taking a false oath in an attempt to evade paying his financial obligations to the contracting company that has completed all tasks assigned to it.

According to the case papers, it was established in the minutes that the complainant company requested before the Criminal Court to adjudicate for it an amount of 51 thousand dirhams in temporary compensation, and to preserve all its other civil rights, which were caused by the owner of the defendant company, as a result of the false oath, which caused him to lose an amount of 444 thousand dirhams. The total value of the business carried out by the complainant.

And the court issued a judgment convicting the owner of the defendant company, for the crime of falsely swearing a decisive oath, fining him an amount of 10 thousand dirhams, and paying the civil claimant an amount of 3000 dirhams as a civil compensation. In a fundamental issue, which is the deception of the decisive oath, the common basis of the criminal and civil lawsuits, and that the compensation awarded for the harm that befell the complainant with the civil right would have been ruled by the availability of the elements and elements of the liability of the owner of the defendant in all its elements of error, damage and causal relationship.

The court indicated that the ruling obligating the owner of the defendant company to pay 3 thousand dirhams as a civil compensation in the criminal case is in fact a temporary compensation, and is not considered a final compensation for the damage suffered by the complaining company for two reasons, the first is that the court is restricted to the requests of the litigants, and the second is that the amount The compensation adjudicated does not cover all the damages suffered by the complainant, after taking into account the value of the claim in the lawsuit in which he falsely swore and in which the complainant was claiming an amount of 444 thousand dirhams.

Accordingly, the court issued a ruling obligating the owner of the defendant to pay 397 thousand dirhams in compensation to the complainant company for the material and moral damages it suffered, bringing the total amounts paid by the defendant to 410 thousand dirhams.

The Court of Appeal upheld the same ruling, after which the owner of the defendant company appealed the ruling.

The Court of Cassation commented that the ruling issued by the court of first and second degrees ended with proving the error on the part of the owner of the defendant, and the trial court, with its authority to assess compensation, had indicated the elements of the damage to the complainant, as a result of the false oath of the owner of the decisive appellant and the consequences of it. Rejecting her demands for her dues for the value of the works she carried out for the benefit of the defendant.

In the rationale for its ruling, the court said that it was established in Article 61 of the Law of Evidence in Civil and Commercial Transactions that “if it is proven that the oath was false by a criminal judgment, then the party who suffered damage from it may claim compensation without prejudice to what he may have of the right to appeal against the judgment issued against him.” That is, when the false oath is proven by a conclusive criminal judgment, then this, although it does not affect the validity of the civil judgment that was based on the false oath, is that the person whose claim was rejected or who was sentenced on the basis of this false oath has the right to demand from the oath what He got hurt.

Accordingly, the Court of Cassation decided not to accept the appeal and obliged the owner of the defendant to pay the fees and expenses.

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