Background
Or Mor and Tomer Heil operated an e-commerce website through an unregistered partnership for several years. After their relationship broke down, they filed mutual claims and agreed to submit their disputes to arbitration before a retired judge, A. Tannenbaum. In June 2023, the arbitrator issued an award finding that the only jointly held asset was a bank account established for the partnership, to be divided equally between the parties. The arbitrator further ordered Mor to pay Heil 180,000 NIS in damages for bad-faith conduct during dissolution negotiations.
Mor petitioned the Beer Sheva District Court to cancel, correct, or supplement the award. In November 2024 the District Court partially accepted the petition: it found no grounds for outright cancellation, but concluded the award needed to be supplemented because the arbitrator had not factored in the value of the website itself, even though the parties had agreed Heil would take ownership of it. The court ordered that the transferred ownership right be set off against the damages Mor owed. Heil then sought leave to appeal that ruling before the Supreme Court (רע”א 83064-12-24), and in February 2025 Justice Mintz granted leave on the limited question of website valuation, finding the District Court had not adequately reasoned its valuation methodology, and remanded the question — leaving it to the District Court to decide whether to resolve it itself or to return it to the arbitrator. The District Court sent the matter back to the arbitrator.
In July 2025, the arbitrator issued a supplemental award valuing the website at its construction costs, estimated at between 10,000 and 30,000 NIS. Crucially, the arbitrator declined to award Mor any monetary relief for the transferred ownership interest, on the ground that a claim for such compensation had never actually been raised before him during the arbitration proceedings. The original award therefore remained intact. When Heil sought court approval of the supplemental award, Mor opposed it and sought cancellation on two grounds: that the arbitrator had exceeded his jurisdiction by valuing the website himself rather than appointing an external expert, and that the supplemental award violated public policy. The District Court (Judge Y. Preski) approved the supplemental award on April 29, 2026, rejecting both objections. Mor then brought the present petition for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Court’s Holding
Justice David Mintz denied leave to appeal. The Court reaffirmed that leave to appeal arbitration-related decisions is reserved for exceptional cases in which a legal question of general significance beyond the parties’ dispute arises, or where appellate intervention is required by considerations of justice or to prevent a miscarriage of justice. That threshold is even higher when the challenge is directed at a court decision concerning the cancellation of an arbitration award. The present case did not meet that threshold.
The Court found that, despite Mor’s attempt to dress his arguments in principled terms, they were in substance ordinary appellate arguments about how the lower court applied the statutory cancellation grounds to the specific facts — the kind of case-specific review that does not, standing alone, justify a grant of leave to appeal. The bare assertion that a “miscarriage of justice” occurred, without concrete substantiation, was held to be insufficient to establish that ground. As to the argument that the arbitrator exceeded his jurisdiction by not appointing an external valuation expert, the Court agreed with the District Court that no such obligation had been imposed on the arbitrator and that he was entitled to draw on his own professional expertise.
Finally, the Court rejected Mor’s newly raised argument that there was an additional ground for cancellation — namely, that the arbitrator had failed to actually decide the question of website value despite being directed to do so. The Court noted that this argument had been raised for the first time in the leave-to-appeal petition itself and had not been included in the original cancellation application before the District Court. A petition for leave to appeal is not the proper forum for introducing new arguments that could and should have been raised at the earlier stage of proceedings.
Key Takeaways
- Israeli courts grant leave to appeal arbitration decisions only in exceptional circumstances — where a legal question of general importance arises, or where justice plainly requires intervention — and apply an even stricter standard when the underlying dispute concerns the cancellation of an arbitration award.
- An arbitrator does not exceed his jurisdiction merely by conducting a valuation himself rather than appointing an external expert, provided no specific obligation to appoint an expert was imposed on him and he possesses relevant professional expertise.
- A petition for leave to appeal is not a second opportunity to raise cancellation grounds that were omitted from the original application to the lower court; new arguments raised for the first time at that stage will not be entertained.
- A bare, unsubstantiated claim of “miscarriage of justice” is insufficient to meet the threshold for granting leave to appeal in arbitration matters.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the Israeli Supreme Court’s strong policy of judicial deference to arbitral proceedings and finality of arbitral awards. By firmly declining to entertain case-specific appellate challenges dressed up as questions of principle, the Court signals that parties who have chosen arbitration — including in commonplace commercial partnership disputes — will be held to that choice and cannot routinely seek a second layer of judicial review through leave-to-appeal petitions.
The ruling also provides practical guidance on procedural discipline: parties opposing an arbitration award must raise all available cancellation grounds before the first-instance court. The Supreme Court will not serve as a forum for incremental argument-building, and litigants who hold back arguments — whether by design or oversight — forfeit them.