Cape Town businessman Hassen Adams has won a war of reputations between himself and the trustees of the Hout Bay Development Trust, which he co-founded, after a Western Cape High Court ruled in his favour.

A Cape Argus report says the dispute goes back to October 2018 when the court ordered Adams be removed with immediate effect as trustee of the trust, which he was instrumental in founding in 1996.

Adams’ fellow trustees – Priscilla Jansen, Janap Davids, Thembisele Dyani and Gregory Louw – brought the application in terms of the Trust Property Control Act.

In the main case, the trustees sued Adams on behalf of the trust for damages allegedly suffered by the trust as a result of his alleged breach of fiduciary duties owed towards the trust while he was a trustee.

The trustees complained that Adams ‘had operated the trust in a manner which is contrary to the provisions of the Act and the trust deed’.

They argued that the trust deed implied that the purpose of the trust should be the upliftment of communities in the Hout Bay area.

Adams, saying he was acting in the public interest, in turn served a third party notice on the trustees in their personal capacities, wanting them to be removed as trustees and to be declared as joint wrongdoers.

Acting Judge Selwyn Hockey had to rule on an exception brought by the trustees against Adam’s counter suit for their removal as trustees of the trust in which they argued Adams lacks legal standing to seek their removal.

Hockey said: ‘On the basis of the pleadings, I have no reason to conclude that the defendant is not genuinely acting in the public interest. As a result, the exception should fail.’

Nevertheless the judge said that a refusal to uphold an exception did not mean that the door was closed for the trustees to progress with the objection to the impugned matter.

Full Cape Argus report

Judgment