A Cape Town man has launched an application in the SCA seeking special leave to challenge a Western Cape High Court judgment that affirmed a lower court's finding that he is the biological father of the child, reports IoL.

The man filed the application after his appeal was dismissed by the Western Cape High Court in November 2025.

Acting Judge Andrew Morrisey, with Judge Andre Le Grange concurring, ruled that the man had failed to overturn an earlier maintenance court decision that found he was the father of the child.

The core substantive of the man’s appeal rests on how the lower courts handled scientific DNA evidence and the statutory presumptions of paternity.

The dispute began in 2016 when the child's mother approached the maintenance court seeking clarity on paternity. However, the origins of the matter date back much further.

A first DNA test conducted in 2001 excluded the man as the father, but concerns were later raised because the testing laboratory was not accredited by the SA National Accreditation System (Sanas).

Subsequent court-directed tests conducted in 2017 and 2019 produced dramatically different results, both indicating a probability of paternity exceeding 99.9999%.

The case took several unusual turns over the years. Expert witnesses, including genetic specialists and representatives of SANAS, reportedly testified during earlier proceedings, but the record of their evidence was later lost.

Multiple magistrates became involved, further DNA testing was ordered and challenged, and the matter was matter was heard de novo around 2024 with the final magistrate ruling delivered in Jan 2025.

During an appeal at the High Court the judges acknowledged the mother's evidence was at times inconsistent and that significant portions of her account aligned with aspects of the appellant's testimony.

The judges concluded neither the mother's testimony nor the DNA evidence, viewed in isolation, was sufficient to establish paternity on a balance of probabilities.

Taken together, however, they pointed overwhelmingly in the same direction.

According to IoL, in the SCA application, the man argued the High Court and maintenance court committed a critical legal error by making definitive scientific findings based on DNA reports, emails and letters in the complete absence of oral expert testimony.

He contended the courts failed to apply the settled legal principle that evaluating expert evidence requires a thorough judicial analysis of the expert's underlying reasoning and factual premises.

According to the man, a court cannot simply read a scientific document at face value and draw its own technical conclusions, especially when the credibility and methodology of the laboratory group had been explicitly challenged on the record.

He referred to an email from the laboratory's director, Dr York, which indicated that some of the DNA testing had been outsourced to a laboratory in Germany and subsequently translated.

He argued this specific outsourcing procedure was unethical and failed to comply with Sanas standards.

Because these procedures were handled externally and introduced through documentation rather than oral evidence, he contended the process required strict cross-examination in court to be properly evaluated, which did not occur.

Additionally, he claimed the High Court invented a revised timeline for the child’s conception.

He concluded the SCA's intervention was necessary to provide clear guidance on the evaluation of DNA documentation and to prevent a manifest injustice.

Full IoL report