Recent Development
The Grand General Assembly of the Court of Cassation for Jurisprudential Unification issued its Decision No. 2017/8, 2019/3 and dated May 24, 2019 (“Jurisprudence Unification Decision”), which was published in the National Gazette on September 27, 2019. According to the Jurisprudence Unification Decision, if a party to a lawsuit submits a petition requesting the increase of a claim amount but does not request the interest of the increase, the increased claim amount’s interest may be granted based on the interest request made in the statement of claims.
What’s New?
Most scholars opine that in a lawsuit, if a party submits an amendment petition requesting an increase of the claim amount but does not request the interest in the same petition, the court would not grant interest for the increased amount because of the “dependency on the request” principle. The Turkish Court of Cassation Chambers, which issued a decision contradicting the Jurisprudence Unification Decision grounded their decision on this principle as well.
The Grand General Assembly of the Court of Cassation addresses this issue by differentiating between a partial and complete amendment. The Grand General Assembly states that as per the Code of Civil Procedure (“CCP“), a certain procedural matter is amended through a partial amendment and the essence of the case does not change. By this logic, all elements in the statement of claims may also be applied to the amendment petition.
The Grand General Assembly emphasizes that in a lawsuit where only a certain part of the total claim is requested, increasing the claim amount is considered a partial amendment and is a continuation of the ongoing case. In other words, the increase request cannot be considered a new or additional case.
In light of the above summarized evaluations, the Jurisprudential Unification Decision concluded that an amendment petition requesting the increase of the claim amount does not eliminate the requests in the statement of claims. Therefore, all elements in the statement of claims, including the interest claim, may also be applied to the requests in the amendment, and it is not necessary to repeat the request for interest in the amendment petition.
Conclusion
In a case where a party requests only a certain part of the total claim with interest, if the party requests the claim amount to be increased through a partial amendment without specifying the interest claim, the increased claim amount’s interest may be granted based on the interest request made in the statement of claims.
It is believed the Jurisprudence Unification Decision will preclude the loss of rights stemming from procedural errors that commonly occur in practice.
