חוק נכי רדיפות הנאצים (תיקון מס' 21), התשע"ו-2016Law for Nazi Persecution Victims (Amendment No. 21), 2016 · automatic translation · suggest a correction

Official summary of the law (Knesset)

The Law on Disabled Victims of Nazi Persecution (Amendment No. 21), 2016 (hereinafter – the Law on Disabled Victims of Nazi Persecution), establishes supplementary and continuing arrangements to Amendment No. 20 to the Law enacted previously. Amendment No. 20 to the Law regulated the maximum fee that lawyers and claim handlers may charge Holocaust survivors for handling various claims submitted by them, and created a mechanism for refunding excess fees, for a limited period of one year. First, Amendment No. 21 established an extension period of one additional year for the refund mechanism, until the end of 2016. Second, the Law established a clarification regarding the excess fee amounts that must be refunded. It was determined that value added tax must be added to the amounts according to which the excess fee to be refunded is calculated, and that a lawyer or claim handler will not be permitted to charge a Holocaust survivor requesting the return of the excess fee any type of commission, expense, or reimbursement for handling the request. Third, a clarification was established regarding the charging of fees for an appeal or objection that was rejected, struck out, or whose handling was discontinued. It was determined that in cases where, following the administrative decision, an appeal was filed with an appeals committee or an appeal was filed with the court, and the appeal was struck out, rejected, or its handling was discontinued, it will not be possible to charge a fee for filing the appeal. However, it was determined within the application provisions, that in a case where the fee agreement included a component of payment for work not contingent on results, the lawyer will be entitled to the fee for work actually paid in accordance with the agreement or the amount determined in Amendment No. 20, whichever is higher. Finally, as part of the amendment to the Law on Disabled Victims of Nazi Persecution, the Claims of Holocaust Victims (Treatment Arrangements) Law, 1957 was also amended. This Law established that the maximum fee that may be charged for handling a claim under the German Law for the Payment of Pensions to Ghetto Workers shall be 7.5% of the one-time retroactive payment made for the claim. It was determined that this arrangement would apply only to new fee agreements concluded after the entry into force of the proposed amendment. At the same time, the Legal Aid Law, 1972 was also amended. In this amendment, the Legal Aid Division was authorized to provide free legal aid to Holocaust survivors, in a case where the lawyer charged them a higher fee than that stated above.

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