Background
Dan Sharoni, a prisoner serving a custodial sentence, filed a petition in the High Court of Justice against the IDF Manpower Branch and the Military Advocate General. His substantive claim is that the respondents breached an administrative promise made to him during criminal proceedings before the military court system, and that this breach deprived him of pension rights he is now entitled to receive.
The petition is a second attempt at the same dispute. An earlier petition on the same matter was decided by a three-judge panel — Deputy President Justice N. Sohlberg, Justice E. Grosskopf, and Justice Y. Kasher — in HCJ 6062/24 on 14 April 2025. Sharoni argues that the prior decision was based on a false and misleading factual record presented by the respondents, necessitating the current petition.
Sharoni applied for a full waiver of the court filing fee. In support he relied on his status as a prisoner earning only a minimal income from prison labour, significant alimony obligations he cannot meet, the attachment of any funds deposited to his account toward those alimony payments, and cumulative alimony-related claims filed against him exceeding ₪1,000,000. He filed a supporting affidavit but attached no documentary evidence. He also noted that an identical fee-waiver application in parallel administrative court proceedings (Administrative Petition 50084-12-25) had been granted in full.
The Court’s Holding
Registrar Judge Moran Yahav denied the full fee waiver but exercised the court’s discretion to reduce the filing fee to ₪500, to be paid by 30 June 2026, failing which the petition may be struck without further order.
The Registrar reaffirmed the two-part cumulative test for a fee waiver: the applicant must (1) establish financial inability through a full and current evidentiary foundation, and (2) demonstrate sufficient prospects of success on the merits. Sharoni failed the first prong: apart from a reference to the fee-waiver application filed in the parallel administrative proceeding — and even that was submitted without its supporting annexes — no documentation was produced. The fact that a waiver was granted in a different proceeding was held to be irrelevant, because each application must be assessed on its own facts and evidentiary record.
The Registrar nonetheless noted indicators of genuine financial hardship and, taking into account the circumstances of the case and the nature of the proceeding, exercised the court’s equitable discretion to reduce (rather than waive entirely) the fee to a nominal ₪500. The decision expressly reserved any view on the merits or prospects of the underlying petition.
Key Takeaways
- A fee-waiver application before the Israeli Supreme Court requires both a complete, current documentary record of financial incapacity and demonstrated prospects of success; bare assertions or an affidavit unsupported by documents are insufficient.
- A successful fee waiver in separate proceedings involving the same applicant does not bind or guide the court in a new application; each application is assessed independently on its own facts.
- Even where a full waiver is refused for lack of documentation, the court retains discretion to reduce — rather than impose the full amount of — the filing fee where there are genuine indications of financial hardship.
- The respondents’ observation that the underlying petition appears to re-litigate a matter already resolved in HCJ 6062/24 weighed against the applicant on the prospects-of-success prong, though the Registrar made no definitive ruling on that question.
Why It Matters
This procedural ruling is a concise restatement of Israeli Supreme Court practice on fee waivers. It confirms that prisoners and other financially vulnerable petitioners must still substantiate their claims with documentary evidence — an affidavit alone will not suffice — while also illustrating that courts retain a residual equitable power to reduce fees short of a full waiver when hardship is plausible but unproven.
The decision also implicitly flags the res judicata risk facing litigants who seek to relitigate matters already determined by the High Court: the prior resolution of the substantive pension dispute in HCJ 6062/24 appears to cast a long shadow over this second petition, and practitioners advising clients in similar positions should weigh that risk carefully before filing.