Arbitrator Rules Benaya Barabi Broke Management Contract, Orders Million-Shekel Damages

After a four-year legal battle, singer Benaya Barabi has been ordered to pay his former manager, Or Marmelstein, millions of shekels after an arbitrator found that he breached their management contract.

The dispute was handled by agreement in arbitration before attorney Dr. Alon Kaplan. In the award, Kaplan said Marmelstein’s claim was largely accepted and ordered Barabi to pay 3.4 million shekels plus an additional 950,000 shekels, subject to interest and indexation.

Kaplan wrote that Barabi violated the management agreement when he sent a notice of termination “not in accordance with the terms of the agreement and without a justified legal reason.” He said Barabi ended the contract unilaterally before its scheduled expiration. Barabi argued that the agreement had apparently been signed fraudulently, but that claim was rejected. The arbitrator also wrote that Barabi “worked against the agreement even before he terminated it.”

Barabi’s counterclaim against Marmelstein was mostly rejected, though Marmelstein was ordered to return about 80,000 shekels to the artist because of accounting discrepancies that emerged during the proceedings. Kaplan noted that the sides had intended to finish the case within a year, but extensive motions and expert opinions prolonged it to four years.