How a French Resident Set Aside a NIS 1.48M Israeli Default Judgment

Result: A NIS 1,480,000 Israeli default judgment cancelled for defective service and the claim settled at NIS 185,000 · Timeline: 7 months · Challenge: Judgment obtained without any service in France · Authority: Tel Aviv Magistrates Court and the tribunal judiciaire de Lyon · Financial Impact: NIS 1,295,000 of exposure removed

Background

On a Tuesday morning in January a commissaire de justice knocked on a door in a village outside Lyon and handed a retired engineer a summons to appear before the tribunal judiciaire. The document told him that an Israeli claimant held a judgment against him for NIS 1,480,000, entered in Tel Aviv ten months earlier, and was asking the French court to declare it enforceable in France. He had savings, a house and a modest pension. He had never received a claim form, never instructed an Israeli lawyer, and had not set foot in Israel since 2019.

The dispute behind it was real enough. He had been a minority partner in a small Israeli venture that wound down in 2019, and one of the other partners maintained that he owed unpaid contributions. That partner had filed in the Tel Aviv Magistrates Court in 2024 and obtained judgment in his absence in March 2025. What the partner had not done was tell him about it.

The Challenge

Two clocks were running against him and they ran at different speeds. Regulation 131 of the Civil Procedure Regulations 5779-2018 allows a party against whom a decision was given in his absence to apply within 30 days of the decision being served to have it cancelled. He had never been served with the judgment at all, which meant the 30 days had arguably not started. That is a good argument and a fragile one, because it has to be pleaded and proved rather than assumed, and an Israeli court will not simply overlook a ten-month gap because a defendant abroad says he was unaware.

The second clock was French. Once an exequatur claim is on foot, the French court will decide it on the material before it, and a defendant who lets it go by default in Lyon as well has compounded his problem in the one country where his assets actually sit.

The service itself was the heart of the case. The claimant had posted the papers by registered mail to an apartment in Bat Yam that had belonged to the defendant's late mother and which he had sold in 2020, and had left a second copy with a cousin in Netanya. Everything was in Hebrew. Nothing was ever transmitted to France, through the French central authority or otherwise. Israeli practice divides applications to cancel into two families, and the distinction decides the case. Where the judgment rests on defective service, cancellation follows as an obligation of justice and the defendant does not need to show a strong defence at all. Where service was proper and the defendant simply did nothing, cancellation is discretionary and the quality of the defence carries most of the weight. This file belonged firmly in the first family.

One misconception had to be cleared out of the way before the argument could be made properly, because clients raise it constantly. France has entered no opposition to Article 10(a) of the Hague Service Convention 1965, so an Israeli claimant may serve a French resident by post to a French address. Delivery by ordinary mail to France would not have been the defect. The defect was that no document was ever sent to France in any form. The immediate steps for someone who does receive Israeli papers abroad are set out in our answer on being served with an Israeli lawsuit while living abroad.

In Practice: Regulation 131 of the Civil Procedure Regulations 5779-2018 gives 30 days from service of the judgment to apply for cancellation, and where the judgment rests on defective service the Tel Aviv Magistrates Court cancels it as an obligation of justice rather than as a discretion. Applications are commonly listed for hearing two to four months after filing, and where cancellation is discretionary the court usually conditions it on the defendant paying wasted costs of NIS 2,500 to NIS 10,000. The claimant's own court fee on a claim of this size, calculated at 2.5% of the amount claimed, was NIS 37,000, half of it paid on filing.

What We Did

We started with the file rather than with the client's account of it. Israeli civil files are electronic, and within a week we had the statement of claim, the service affidavit and the application for judgment in absence. The service affidavit was the document that decided the case: it recited delivery to the Bat Yam address and to a relative in Netanya, described the defendant as a person whose whereabouts were in Israel, and made no mention of France anywhere. The claimant had never sought leave to serve out of the jurisdiction and had never established any of the connecting grounds in Regulation 166 that would have supported service abroad.

Next we fixed the date of knowledge in writing, because that date was the foundation of the whole application. The commissaire de justice had drawn up a procès-verbal recording delivery of the exequatur summons on 14 January. That document, translated and exhibited, put the earliest possible start of the 30-day period beyond argument.

The evidence then had to be sworn from France. He signed his affidavit before a consular officer at the Israeli consulate in Paris under Section 50(a) of the Notaries Law 1976, which produces a document admissible in Israel without any apostille. The power of attorney appointing us went the other route, notarised before a French notary and apostilled through the notarial chambers, which since 1 May 2025 issue French apostilles directly and without charge. Both documents were in Israel inside three weeks.

We filed the Regulation 131 application with a draft defence attached, even though on the obligation-of-justice limb we did not strictly need one. Courts respond better to a defendant who shows he has something to say. In parallel, French counsel entered an appearance before the tribunal judiciaire de Lyon and asked for the exequatur proceedings to be stayed. The French conditions for exequatur, settled by the Cour de cassation in its Cornelissen decision of 20 February 2007, require a characterised connection founding the foreign court's jurisdiction, conformity with international public policy in its procedural as well as its substantive sense, and the absence of fraud. A judgment obtained against an absent defendant who was never notified anywhere near his actual home engages the second of those conditions directly.

In Practice: Under Article 15 of the Hague Service Convention 1965, a court in the state of origin may not give judgment against an absent defendant abroad until it is established that the document was served or delivered in sufficient time to defend. Israel has made no declaration under the second paragraph of Article 15, so an Israeli court cannot fall back on the six-month elapsed-time route that some states allow. Transmission to France runs through the Département de l'entraide, du droit international privé et européen at 13 Place Vendôme, Paris, and a central-authority request takes three to six months. France's Article 5(3) declaration lets the addressee require a French translation at the requesting party's expense, and a certified translation of a claim file this size costs NIS 6,000 to NIS 9,000, which is exactly why claimants are tempted to skip the step.

The Outcome

The Tel Aviv Magistrates Court heard the application three months after it was filed and cancelled the judgment. The reasoning was short, as it usually is on this limb: a defendant who was never brought before the court is entitled to have a judgment against him set aside without demonstrating the merits of his defence. No condition was imposed on him, and the court awarded him NIS 7,500 in costs.

The exequatur claim in Lyon was withdrawn within a fortnight of the Israeli decision, since there was no longer a judgment to recognise. That mattered more than the Israeli ruling in one practical respect. A French exequatur, once granted, would have exposed his house and his bank accounts to enforcement in the place he actually lives, and unwinding it would have meant an appeal in France as well as an application in Israel.

The underlying dispute did not disappear, and it should not have. With the judgment gone and a defence on file, the partnership claim was argued on its numbers for the first time. Substantial parts of it were time-barred and others were unsupported by the venture's own accounts. It settled four months later at NIS 185,000, paid in three instalments, against an entered judgment of NIS 1,480,000 that had been accruing interest and linkage since March 2025. Seven months from the knock on the door to a signed settlement.

Key Takeaways

What this case illustrates for non-residents in similar situations:

1. Attack the service before anything else. Where an Israeli judgment rests on defective service, cancellation under Regulation 131 follows almost as of right, and you do not have to persuade the court that your defence is strong.
2. Service by post to a French, British, American, Canadian or Australian address is generally permissible under Article 10(a), because none of those states has opposed it. The winning point is usually that nothing was sent to your country at all, not that it arrived by the wrong method.
3. Record the date you first learned of the judgment, with a document that proves it. The 30 days in Regulation 131 run from service of the judgment on you, and where that never happened the date of knowledge becomes the fact the entire application stands on.
4. Run the foreign recognition proceedings and the Israeli application together. Defending only in Israel leaves an exequatur or registration claim advancing unopposed in the country where your assets are.
5. An affidavit sworn before an Israeli consular officer under Section 50(a) of the Notaries Law 1976 is admissible in Israel with no apostille, which removes a step and often a fortnight when the timetable is tight.

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Facing a Similar Situation?

If you have been told that an Israeli court has given judgment against you, or a foreign lawyer has approached you about recognising one, the first question is not what the claim says but how you were served. Our guide to appealing an Israeli civil judgment from abroad covers the routes available once a judgment exists.

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