Law
No. (5) of 2017
Amending
Law No. (12) of 2004
Concerning
the
Dubai
International Financial Centre Courts[1]
ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
We,
Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai,
After perusal of:
Law No. (9) of 2004 Concerning the Dubai
International Financial Centre and its amendments; and
Law No. (12) of 2004
Concerning the
Dubai International Financial Centre Courts and its amendments,
Do hereby issue
this Law.
Article (5) of the above-mentioned Law
No. (12) of 2004 is hereby superseded by the following:
a.
The Court of First Instance:
1.
The Court of First Instance will have exclusive
jurisdiction to hear and determine the following:
a.
the
civil, commercial, or labour claims to which the DIFC, or any of the DIFC Bodies,
DIFC Establishments, or DIFC-licensed Establishments, is a
party;
b.
the
civil, commercial, or labour applications and claims arising out of, or in
connection with, a contract, or a promise to
enter into contract, that
has been concluded, fulfilled,
or implemented
in whole or in part in the DIFC; or that
will be, or is
presumed to be,
implemented in the DIFC pursuant to explicit or implicit
terms stipulated
in that contract;
c.
the
civil, commercial, or labour applications and claims arising out of, or in connection with, an
incident or a
transaction that takes place, in whole or in part, in the
DIFC and that is related to DIFC activities;
d.
the
appeals filed against the actions or decisions that are rendered by the
DIFC Bodies and that are appealable under the
DIFC laws and regulations; and
e.
any
other application or claim which the DIFC Courts have jurisdiction
to hear under
the DIFC laws and regulations.
2.
The
Court of First Instance may hear and determine the civil and commercial
applications and claims referred to it based
on a written
agreement between the parties thereto, whether made before or
after the relevant dispute arises. This agreement must be
clearly and expressly stipulated in a separate provision.
3.
The
Court of First Instance may hear and determine civil, commercial, or labour
applications and claims that fall within its jurisdiction
in case of
dismissal of the application or claim, for lack of jurisdiction, by the court of choice agreed
upon in writing by the parties.
4.
The
Court of First Instance may not hear or determine any civil,
commercial, or labour application or claim in respect of which a final
judgement has been rendered by another court.
b.
The Court of Appeal:
1.
The
Court of Appeal will have exclusive jurisdiction to:
a.
hear
and determine appeals against judgments and decisions rendered by
the Court of First Instance; and
b.
provide
the interpretation of any provisions
of the DIFC laws
and regulations upon the request of the Chief Justice of
the DIFC Courts based
on an application submitted by any of the DIFC Bodies, DIFC Establishments, or
DIFC-licensed Establishments. The interpretation provided by the Court of
Appeal will have the same legal force as the interpreted
legislation.
2.
The
judgments rendered by the Court of Appeal will be
irrevocable, definitive, and not subject to any
form of appeal.
c. Litigation
Proceedings:
The proceedings prescribed by the DIFC
Courts Regulations will apply to the civil, commercial, and labour applications
and claims being heard by the DIFC Courts.
d.
DIFC Execution Judges
The Chief Justice of
the DIFC Courts will
appoint one or more DIFC Court judges as Execution Judge(s).
This Law comes into force on the day on
which it is issued, and will be published in the Official Gazette.
Mohammed bin Rashid Al
Maktoum
Ruler of Dubai
Issued in Dubai on 30 January 2017
Corresponding to 2 Jumada al-Ula
1438 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.