Courts notify litigants by SMS and email

The Ministry of Justice on Sunday officially started to implement the royal decree to use digital communication for judicial notifications.

Waleed Al-Samaani, the justice minister and chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council, ordered the implementation after the e-notification controls had been published in the official “Umm Al-Qura” newspaper last Friday.

The ministry said in a press statement that e-notification was considered productive for legal communication in three cases. The first was notification with an SMS sent to a phone number verified by the competent authority.

The second case was notification on the natural or legal person’s email address when the address belonged to the person, had been included in a contract between the parties, had been mentioned on the person’s website or has been verified by a government entity. The third case was notification via an account registered on any of the government-automated systems.

The ministry said that — in addition to the data required for the notice and claim statement — the ID card or commercial registration number of the defendant, execution debtor or those being notified would also be included, and they would have to provide such data.

The official implementation comes at a time when some judicial panels, such as those of commercial courts, have started applying it and linked it to the ministry’s digital systems, in addition to the traditional notification means, including process servers and Saudi Post.

Earlier,King Salman had issued a royal decree approving judicial e-notifications — via SMSs on verified phone numbers, emails and accounts registered on government automated systems — as valid and effective notifications, the same as other means traditionally recognized by law.