Dubai Court of Cassation (General Assembly), Resolution No. 4 of 2025, 18 June 2025
Article 190 of the Civil Procedure Code is an exception to res judicata that lets the Court of Cassation revoke its own final judgments or chamber decisions in limited cases. When it quashes and remits, the remand court is bound by the points of law decided (Article 186), which become final. Even so, if one of the Article 190 grounds exists in a point of law decided in a quash-and-remit judgment, a request for reconsideration may be filed under the procedures and time limits of Article 190 as long as the remand court has not yet decided the merits; once a request is filed, the remand court must stay the case until it is decided. Settled legal positions on which other final judgments were built are not reopened.
At the request of the President of the Court of Cassation, the General Assembly considered the meaning of 'final judgment' (الحكم البات) in Article 190 of Federal Decree-Law No. 42 of 2022 (Civil Procedure Code).
The Assembly explained that a final judgment is ordinarily one that has exhausted ordinary and extraordinary means of challenge, or for which the time to challenge has expired. Article 190 is an important exception: it gives the Court of Cassation an exceptional power, in limited situations, to revoke its decisions in chambers or its final judgments, of its own motion or at the request of the affected party, in order to correct errors and achieve justice. Under Article 186, when the Court of Cassation quashes a judgment and remits the case, the remand court must follow the quashing judgment on the points it decided. Those points therefore acquire the force of res judicata and become final, and cannot be revisited before the remand court or before the Court of Cassation on a second appeal.
It followed, in the Assembly's view, that where one of the Article 190 grounds exists in a legal point decided by the Court of Cassation, even in a judgment that quashed and remitted, a request for reconsideration may be filed within Article 190's procedures and time limits, provided the remand court has not yet decided the merits. Once legal positions have become settled and rights have arisen under final judgments on which other judgments were built, a later intervention cannot disturb them; the exceptional right of revocation applies only while those positions are not yet settled. In all cases, if a request for reconsideration of the remitting judgment is filed, the remand court must stay the case until it is decided.
The Assembly resolved accordingly.
A party that loses on a point of law in a quash-and-remit judgment has a limited window to seek its revocation: the request must be filed before the remand court decides the merits, and the remand proceedings are stayed meanwhile. After the remand court rules, the point is closed. The resolution affects strategy in long-running commercial disputes that go to cassation more than once.
| Articles 186 and 190 of Federal Decree-Law No. 42 of 2022 (Civil Procedure Code) — text of articles 186, 190 |
“فإنه يجوز تقديم طلب الرجوع وفقًا للإجراءات والمواعيد المقررة في المادة 190 المار ذكرها ، طالما لم يفصل بعد في الموضوع من محكمة الإحالة”Short quotation from the judgment as published by the court. The full judgment is on the court’s official service.
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