Law
No. (12) of 2004
Concerning
the
Judicial
Authorities at the Dubai International Financial Centre[1]
ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
We, Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of
Dubai,
After perusal of:
The
Constitution of the United Arab Emirates and its amendments;
Federal
Law No. (11) of 1992 Issuing the Civil Procedure Code;
Federal
Decree No. (35) of 2004 Establishing the Dubai International Financial Centre;
Law
No. (3) of 1992 Establishing the Dubai Courts; and
Law
No. (9) of 2004 Concerning the Dubai International Financial Centre,
Do hereby issue this Law.
This
Law will be cited as “Law No. (12) of 2004 Concerning the Judicial Authorities
at the Dubai International Financial Centre”.
The
following words and expressions will have the meaning indicated opposite each
of them unless the context implies otherwise:
|
UAE: |
United Arab Emirates. |
|
Emirate: |
The Emirate of Dubai. |
|
Ruler: |
His Highness the Ruler of the Emirate of Dubai. |
|
DIFC: |
The Dubai International Financial Centre. |
|
President: |
The president of the DIFC. |
|
DIFC Bodies: |
The bodies established pursuant to paragraph (3) of
Article (3) of the above-mentioned Law No. (9) of 2004 and any other entity established
by these bodies or by the President. |
|
Dubai Courts: |
The Courts of the Emirate established pursuant to
the above-mentioned Law No. (3) of 1992. |
|
Licensed DIFC Establishments: |
Any entity licensed, registered, or otherwise
authorised to conduct financial or banking business, including the
|
|
DIFC Regulations: |
Any rules, bylaws, or orders related to the DIFC and
issued by the President or by the DIFC Bodies. |
|
DIFC Establishments: |
Any entity or enterprise that is duly established,
or that conducts any activity, within the DIFC. This includes Licensed DIFC
Establishments. |
|
DIFC Courts: |
The Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal
established within the DIFC pursuant to this Law. |
|
Arbitral Award: |
Any arbitration award that is recognised under the
DIFC Laws, or any foreign arbitration award that satisfies the requirements
of the DIFC Laws. |
|
Bylaws of the DIFC Courts: |
The bylaws regulating litigation procedures before
the DIFC Courts. |
1. Pursuant
to this Law, the DIFC Courts are established. The DIFC Courts will perform
their duties in an independent manner in accordance with the provisions of this
Law, DIFC Laws, and DIFC Regulations. The DIFC Courts will be structured in two
levels: first instance and appeal.
2. The
head office of the DIFC Courts will be located in the DIFC. The DIFC Courts
may, where required, hold hearings anywhere else in the Emirate.
3. The
Court of First Instance will be constituted of a single judge and the Court of
Appeal will be constituted of a presiding judge and two other judges. The Court
of First Instance and the Court of Appeal will have one or more divisions. The
Chief Justice or, where necessary, the most senior judge will preside over the
Court of Appeal.
4. The
judges, including the Chief Justice, will be appointed by a decree issued by
the Ruler.
5. The
judgements of the DIFC Courts will be issued in the name of the Ruler.
6. The
judgements of the Court of Appeal will be rendered unanimously or by majority
vote. The minority must record the dissenting opinion along with the judgment
of the majority.
1. The
Chief Justice will constitute the various divisions of the DIFC Courts and
supervise their administrative affairs.
2. The
Chief Justice may delegate all or any of his powers in relation to managing the
DIFC Courts to any of the judges of the DIFC Courts in accordance with the DIFC
Laws and DIFC Regulations.
A. Court
of First Instance
1. Subject
to the provisions of paragraph (2) of this Article, the Court of First Instance
will have exclusive jurisdiction to hear:
a. the
civil or commercial claims and
disputes to which the DIFC, or any of the DIFC Bodies or DIFC Establishments, is a party;
b. the
civil or commercial claims and
disputes arising out of, or relating to, a contract or transaction which is wholly or
partly performed within the DIFC; or an incident that has occurred in the DIFC;
c. the appeals filed against the decisions that
are rendered by the DIFC Bodies and that are appealable under the DIFC Laws and DIFC Regulations; and
d. any other application which the DIFC Courts
have jurisdiction to hear under the DIFC Laws and DIFC Regulations.
2. Parties
may agree to submit to the jurisdiction of any other court in respect of the
matters set forth in paragraphs (a), (b) and (d) of this Article.
B. Court
of Appeal
1. The
Court of
Appeal will have exclusive jurisdiction to:
a. hear
appeals against judgements and decisions rendered by the Court of First
Instance; and
b. provide
the interpretation of any provisions of the DIFC Laws upon the request of the
DIFC Courts in relation to a claim being heard by them; upon the request of any
of the DIFC Bodies; or upon the request of any DIFC Establishment, provided
that this establishment obtains the permission of the Chief Justice in this
regard. The interpretation provided by the Court of Appeal will have the same
legal force as the interpreted law.
2. Judgements
rendered by the Court of Appeal will be final, and will not be subject to any
form of appeal.
C. DIFC
Execution Judge
The Chief Justice of
the DIFC Courts will appoint one of the Court of First Instance judges as
execution judge, with the authority to issue enforcement orders within the DIFC
jurisdiction.
The DIFC Courts will apply the DIFC Laws and
DIFC Regulations except where the parties to the dispute explicitly agree that
another law will apply, in which case the chosen law
will
apply provided that it does not conflict with public order or public morals.
1. Where
the subject of enforcement is situated within the boundaries of the DIFC, the
DIFC execution judge will enforce the relevant judgement, decision, or order rendered by the DIFC Courts;
or the Arbitral Award ratified by the DIFC Courts.
2. Where the subject of enforcement is situated
outside of the boundaries of the DIFC, the relevant judgement, decision, or
order rendered by the DIFC Courts, or Arbitral Award ratified by DIFC Courts,
will be enforced by the execution judge of the Dubai Courts subject to the
following conditions:
a. The judgement, decision, or order must be
final and enforceable.
b. The judgement, decision, or order must be
translated into Arabic.
3. The
execution judge of the Dubai Courts may not review the merits of the judgements,
decisions, or orders rendered by the DIFC Courts.
4. The
judgements, decisions, and orders rendered outside of the DIFC may be enforced
within the DIFC in the manner prescribed by the DIFC Laws.
Judges
of the DIFC Courts will not be held liable for any act or omission committed by
them in the course of performing their duties unless it is established that
such an act or omission has been committed in bad faith.
The
management of the DIFC Courts affairs and the litigation and enforcement
procedures will be regulated by a special law.
Any
provision in any other law will be repealed to the extent that it contradicts
the provisions of this Law.
This
Law will be published in the Official Gazette and will come into force on the
day on which it is published.
Maktoum
bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Ruler of Dubai
Issued in Dubai on 25 December 2004
Corresponding
to 13 Thu al-Qidah 1425 A.H.
©2020 The Supreme Legislation Committee in the
Emirate of Dubai
[1]Every effort has been made to produce an
accurate and complete English version of this legislation. However, for the
purpose of its interpretation and application, reference must be made to the original
Arabic text. In case of conflict, the Arabic text will prevail.