Law firms are set to get a financial boost from the looming legal war between the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) and Gauteng motorists over the non-payment of e-tolls. According to a Moneyweb report, Sanral says it has summonsed nearly 5 500 individuals and 837 businesses for non-payment of e-tolls.

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), which is fighting e-tolls, says another 6 500 summons were delivered ‘by the bakkie load’ this week at various courts. Noting the cases are likely to clog the justice system, as many are being defended, Moneyweb says one summons is claiming R6.9m in unpaid e-tolls; another R1.6m. Outa is defending scores of its members against Sanral, and has briefed one of SA’s top legal heavy weights, Gilbert Marcus SC, to argue its case.

‘We want to see if we can join these cases so they can be heard together, since they involve pretty much the same legal arguments,’ Outa chair Wayne Duvenage is quoted as saying. Sanral’s Strategic Plan document shows an allocation of R8.5m for legal fees in the 2015/16 financial year, and R5.7m for the current year. Sanral has appointed Daly Attorneys to manage the issue of summonses, backed by a network of correspondent attorneys around the country. Werksmans Attorneys is on retainer to Sanral as its attorney of record on e-tolls. According to one legal expert, the attorneys issuing the summonses are likely to make about R25m out of Sanral. That doesn’t count what attorneys will make from defending their clients, which is likely to be a similar number, says the report.

Full Moneyweb report  

Outa chair Wayne Duvenage says they had asked Sanral for proper information about the summonses because they are incomplete. He said the summonses Sanral had issued were simple summonses, meaning they were not supported by other evidence such as photos of the motorists going through the e-tolls, notes a report in The Mercury. Duvenage reportedly said Sanral had until today to provide the information. ‘Our view is that it is time to halt the issuing of summonses as these are going to clog the courts. Sanral must agree to take a test case to court with us so there can be a final outcome on the validity of the e-tolls. We are very well prepared for a new court case as we have had many years to investigate further since we lost the first court case to a technicality,’ he is quoted as saying. The summonses should be suspended pending the outcome of such a test case as the courts could not deal with this huge number of summonses, especially given the high number of criminal cases, he said.

Full report in The Mercury (subscription needed)