The Eastern Cape High Court (East London) has shut down local attorney Pythagoras Vuyisile Magqabi’s excuses for not paying an advocate R287,143 in fees, finding the default judgment granted against him in 2019 must stand, reports the Daily Dispatch.

Advocate Babalo Metu obtained default judgment against Magqabi in December 2019 for unpaid fees in several matters in which the attorney had instructed him to appear.

Magqabi is listed on the Legal Practice Council’s website as a registered attorney with Magqabi Seth Zita Incorporated.

When the original application for default judgment was granted despite his opposition, Magqabi applied to the High Court for its rescission.

Judge John Smith found that Magqabi should have appealed the judgment.

He said Magqabi was present when the default judgment application was argued, and whether he had provided a valid defence to the application was fully ventilated in court. The application for rescission would ‘require me effectively to sit on appeal’ in respect of the default judgment, Smith said.

‘I am not at liberty to do so where proper procedures have not been followed and a court of appeal has not been properly constituted in terms of the court rules.’

In any case, said Smith, Magqabi had submitted, first, that he was acting on behalf of clients and, second, that there were contingency fee agreements in place which would only be met once the matters were successfully completed.

Magqabi’s contention was untenable that he was ‘somehow absolved ... from his responsibility to pay the fees of the advocate whom he had instructed to represent his clients’, said the judge, according to the Daily Dispatch report.

His counsel in the rescission hearing conceded that by instructing Metu as counsel, Magqabi assumed responsibility for the fees in his capacity as instructing attorney.

‘And the fact that he may have acted in terms of contingency fee agreements with his clients also does not absolve the applicant of the legal responsibility to pay the respondent’s fees. He does not assert that he had reached agreement with (Metu) that he would act on a contingency basis and would require payment only once the matters had been successfully concluded,’ Smith said.

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