The Court Regulations stipulate the payment of a fee on filing any court procedure, in an amount set by the type of procedure. If the procedure is terminated prior to a hearing, the fee is to be reimbursed to the petitioner minus a set deductible. Furthermore, the reimbursed sum should include the linkage differentials from the date of the fee payment.
On June, 9, 2010, the Supreme Court instructed to delete HaMoked's petition (HCJ 2680/10, filed in April). Four days later HaMoked received a cashier's check for the reimbursed fee. HaMoked applied to the court's accounts department requesting to amend the sum, which did not include the linkage differentials as due.
The court's accounts department replied that the reimbursed fee includes the linkage differentials only if 90 days elapsed from the day of fee payment.
HaMoked referred the accounts department to court regulation 17, which stipulates "that under the current regulations, fee reimbursement will include linkage differentials based on the change in the consumer price index from the index preceding the fee payment date until the index preceding the date of fee reimbursement".
On October 15, 2010,
the reply of the court system's legal department arrived at last, declaring that "the accounts department of the court system must return the amount of fees paid in the proceedings detailed in your requests, with linkage differentials added".
HaMoked will receive the linkage differentials for the fees which were reimbursed in wrong amounts; nonetheless, it is a fair assumption that in numerous petitions, by HaMoked and others, reimbursement of fees did not accord with the law, and the state pocketed thousands in Israeli currency, contrary to its own regulations.
