The Tel Aviv District Court ordered NTA, the public company in charge of constructing the Tel Aviv light rail, and H.B. Innovation Ltd., to pay Safeguard Applied Innovation Ltd., represented by our office, NIS170,000. The decision was given in connection with a petition filed by Joseph Shem Tov & Co. for our client. The petition was filed to protest against the decision of the tenders committee of NTA to award H.B. Innovation Ltd. a contract for the provision and maintenance of a safety application for NTA’s work on the light rail.

The firm’s team that handled the petition included Meir Ben-Shachar, the partner who heads our litigation department, Yoni Schneideman, a partner in the firm’s commercial department and Sagi Aharon of the firm’s litigation department.

On June 1, 2020 following the completion of the hearing of the petition, the Tel Aviv district court held that the petition filed by our firm was “justified” and ordered the payment of considerable costs.

The petition was filed against a tender that was published by NTA in May 2019 in which bidders were required to provide price offers for the provision of a work safety system for NTA and which was also intended to provide for the maintenance of the system for a period of three years with an option to extend for an additional two years. The economic value of the tender is around one million New Israeli Shekels.

In March 2019, H.B. Innovation Ltd. was awarded the contract.

The petition issued by the firm claimed that the award was unlawful for a number of reasons, including:

1. H.B. Innovation’s failure to meet one of the critical conditions under the tender – a requirement for professional experience that was defined under the terms of the tender. It transpired that the experience H.B. Innovations claimed to have was actually that of a sister company and not its own experience.
2. H.B. Innovation’s failure to meet a tender requirement to be a woman owned business.

In a detailed judgement provided by Judge Michael Agmon-Gonen of the Tel Aviv District Court, she severely criticized NTA’s conduct in the manner in which it arranged and managed the tender and also criticized H.B. Innovation’s bid.

Despite the deficiencies that the judge harshly criticized, the court found that the unreasonableness of the decision of NTA to award the contract to H.B. Innovation was in a “grey area” and not an “extreme” unreasonableness. Therefore, the court did not cancel the award to H.B. Innovation. However, due to the claims raised by the firm’s legal team, the court issued an uncommon order for both NTA and H.B. Innovations to pay Safeguard costs of NIS170,000, because the court found that the petition was justified, took into account the negligence and the manner in which the tender was drafted and executed, and due to various other claims raised by our firm.