Dubai Court of Cassation (General Assembly), Resolution No. 5 of 2023, 24 October 2023
Under Article 9(3) of the Civil Procedure Code, where a person cannot be served by the ordinary methods, the case management office or competent judge has an inquiry made with at least one relevant authority, and the person is then served by posting on the court's website or by publication in a widely read Arabic daily (and a foreign-language paper for a foreigner where needed). Service at each stage of litigation is a separate procedure, but whether the inquiry was serious and sufficient is a question of fact for the trial judge. An inquiry made once may therefore be relied on for service at all later stages, unless the circumstances call for a fresh inquiry, a matter within the judge's discretion.
The President of the Court of Cassation, acting under Article 20(a)(2) of Dubai Law No. 13 of 2016 on the Judicial Authority, asked the General Assembly whether, where a person could not be served and an inquiry about his whereabouts was made at one stage of the litigation, the inquiry must be repeated at each later stage or the earlier result may be relied on.
The Assembly analysed Article 9(3) of the Civil Procedure Code. If service by the methods in Article 9(1) fails, the matter goes to the case management office, the competent judge or the presiding judge, who has an inquiry made with at least one relevant authority, after which the person is served by posting on the court's website or by publication in a widely circulated Arabic daily newspaper, electronic or printed, and in a foreign-language newspaper if needed and the person is a foreigner. This exceptional method responds to situations in which further attempts to find the person's domicile or workplace would be futile, and it requires the party seeking service to have made sufficient inquiries.
The service steps at each stage, including the inquiry, the service of the statement of claim and the service of the judgment, are independent of one another, so a defect in one does not affect the others. But the seriousness and sufficiency of the inquiries a claimant makes before resorting to website posting or publication are questions of fact for the trial court, assessed in the circumstances of each service, once it has considered the efforts made.
The Assembly therefore resolved that the judge supervising the case management office, the competent judge, the presiding judge or the court may, in their discretion, rely on a single inquiry for service throughout the litigation, unless the circumstances require a fresh inquiry at a later stage, so as not to prolong proceedings.
Defendants who cannot be found, including debtors who have left the country or abandoned business premises, can delay litigation if a new address search is required at each stage. The resolution allows a single inquiry to support service by website or publication throughout the case, while leaving room for a defendant to argue that changed circumstances required a new inquiry.
| Article 9(3) of Federal Decree-Law No. 42 of 2022 (Civil Procedure Code) — text of article 9 |
| Article 20 of Dubai Law No. 13 of 2016 on the Judicial Authority in the Emirate of Dubai (powers and majority of the General Assembly) |
“صحة الاكتفاء بالتحري -السابق للإعلان- لمرة واحدة طوال أمد التقاضي ما لم تكن ظروف الواقعة تستدعي إجراء تحري لمرة أخري”Short quotation from the judgment as published by the court. The full judgment is on the court’s official service.
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