The Legal Practice Council (LPC) met last week to plan a way forward after the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) slapped it with a punitive costs order in a scathing judgment that found its arguments were ‘largely meritless’ and that its conduct in the litigation was ‘indubitably vexatious and reprehensible’.

The case saw key stakeholders in the profession, the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel), the Black Lawyers Association (BLA) and the Law Society of SA, haul the regulator to court about a decision to rerun an election for the board of the Legal Practitioners Fidelity Fund.

The result of the LPC’s meeting on Wednesday was a partial climbdown: the LPC told the Sunday Times it had decided it would tally the votes of the earlier, disputed, election and ‘thereafter decide whether the persons in favour of whom the most votes have been cast were duly elected’.

It also said it welcomed the opportunity to ‘set the record straight’ and that it disagreed the with the criticisms in the judgment and the punitive costs order.

The fidelity fund manages more than R5bn, according to Nadel’s court papers.

Its main job is to protect the public by paying out claims when unscrupulous lawyers steal money from trust accounts.

The Sunday Times notes that the board of the fund therefore plays an important public function.

In January the LPC, which manages the election of the fund’s board, decided not to tally the results of an October 2023 election for the board, saying the election had not been conducted according to the LPC’s rules. It announced it would rerun the election.

But Nadel, the BLA and the Law Society challenged this decision in court, saying the LPC had no power in law to take the steps it did.

The court granted an interim interdict, putting a new election on ice pending a full hearing on the final orders sought by the legal bodies: for the LPC to tally the votes, declare the results and publish the names of those elected in the Government Gazette.

The Sunday Times notes that the judgment, albeit interim, was blistering.

Among other criticisms, Acting Judge Karin Strydom said that, in opposing the application, the LPC had ‘a paucity of legally or factually sound arguments’, that its arguments were ‘largely meritless’ and that the way it had conducted itself in the litigation was ‘indubitably vexatious and reprehensible’.

Responding to questions, the LPC focused on its interpretation of the LPC’s rules. It said these required that voters be limited to voting for board members in their region: lawyers in Gauteng should vote for a Gauteng board member, lawyers in the Western Cape for a Western Cape board member, and so on.

The judgment did not deal with the correctness of the LPC’s interpretation of its rules as this was ‘not an issue this court ... is called to pronounce on,’ said Strydom.

She instead focused on whether, on a prima facie basis, the LPC was empowered by its rules or by the law to have made the decisions it did.

Full Sunday Times report