Article 146: Conflicting final judgments, which prevails

Décisions de la Cour suprême interprétant cette section

1. Arrêt de la Cour suprême n° 674/2566 (2023)

   Section 146 paragraph one applies only where final judgments of two courts of different levels conflict over the performance of an indivisible obligation.

   The court explained that the essence of Section 146 paragraph one is a conflict between final judgments of two courts of different levels concerning an indivisible obligation. Applying that, it examined whether a Supreme Court judgment conflicted with an appeal court judgment in a related execution matter.

2. Arrêt de la Cour suprême n° 3196/2567 (2024)

   There is no provision of law making the President of the Supreme Court or the plenary Supreme Court the arbiter of which of two conflicting Supreme Court judgments is to be followed. Where a party petitions for such a determination, the court of first instance is entitled to refuse to forward the petition and to dismiss it. That is a question of the right to petition at all, which it is the duty of the court of first instance to examine and rule on in the order of instances, and in dismissing the petition on that ground the court does not trespass into deciding which of the judgments should be followed.

   The first plaintiff petitioned for the President of the Supreme Court or the plenary Supreme Court to determine which of two Supreme Court judgments said to conflict should be followed. The Supreme Court held that the court of first instance, taking the view that no provision of law makes the President or the plenary Court the arbiter of conflicting Supreme Court judgments, was entitled to refuse to forward the petition and to dismiss it; the question is one of the right to petition, which the court of first instance must examine and decide in the order of instances, and in doing so it did not trespass into deciding which judgment was to be followed. The Court did not decide whether section 146 paragraph two would permit such a petition between two judgments of the same court, that being unnecessary once no conflict was found.

3. Arrêt de la Cour suprême n° 8195/2561 (2018)

   Section 146 applies only where final judgments of courts of different levels conflict over the performance of one and the same indivisible obligation. Where the two cases raised different issues and the obligations adjudged were not the same indivisible obligation, there is no conflict and section 146 does not apply.

   In the first case J., an alien at the time, recovered the disputed land from his nominees, and the appeal judgment ordered the land sold under Land Code sections 94 and 96 so that he received the proceeds instead of ownership. Because N., his wife, was also an alien when the land was acquired, her right as co-owner, which passed to her heirs, was likewise to the proceeds of sale and not to ownership. The second case, in which S. obtained a final Supreme Court judgment for a one-seventh share of N.'s part of the land, was therefore a judgment about dividing that share of the proceeds. Since the issues in the two cases differed and the obligations were not one and the same indivisible obligation, the Supreme Court held the judgments did not conflict and section 146 did not apply.

Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.