A businessman who lost R10m after paying it into an attorney's trust account has lost another attempt to recover the money from the Legal Practitioners' Fidelity Fund, more than a decade after first lodging his claim.

According to The Mercury, the SCA has overturned a High Court ruling that gave Rodney Love another chance to pursue the R10m, finding the lower court had contradicted an earlier SCA decision involving the matter.

Love paid R10m into the trust account of Turnbull and Associates Incorporated in April 2011 for the proposed purchase of shares in Sword Fern Trading.

‘The sale did not materialise. The R10m was stolen,’ the judgment recorded.

Love also lent nearly R4.3m to Sword Fern Trading in a transaction facilitated by Alberto Pavoncelli.

By August 2011, Love had become concerned about the share deal and asked for his money back. When it was not returned, he applied for the liquidation of Sword Fern Trading and sued Turnbull for repayment of the R10m.

In May 2012, Pavoncelli gave Love a written undertaking to repay both the loan and the R10m.

Love later stated in an affidavit that Pavoncelli had given the undertaking because he had personally misappropriated the money. Pavoncelli did not pay.

Sword Fern Trading was placed into final liquidation and Love obtained judgments for repayment, but the sheriff found no property that could be attached to settle the debt.

Love then turned to what was then the Attorneys Fidelity Fund, lodging a R10m claim in October 2013.

The fund rejected it in 2014 because claims had to be lodged within three months of a person becoming aware, or reasonably being expected to become aware, of the theft, reports The Mercury.

Love maintained he only became aware of the theft on 2 September 2013.

In 2017, the High Court found Love had notified the fund within the required period. A full Bench upheld that decision in 2019. But the SCA overturned those findings in 2021, ruling Love knew by 28 November 2012 at the latest the R10m had been misappropriated.

Love's claim had therefore been lodged too late.

He approached the Constitutional Court, which declined to hear the appeal in February 2022.

However, Love had also launched separate review proceedings against the fund years earlier. Those proceedings eventually reached the High Court in 2023, with Love arguing the fund should have exercised its discretion to extend the three-month deadline.

The High Court agreed and extended the deadline to 7 October 2013. It found that Love had not known his money had been stolen until September 2013. That was the problem.

The SCA said it had already decided in 2021 that Love knew by November 2012 that the money had been misappropriated.

‘The findings of the SCA and the High Court are directly contradictory factual findings concerning the same claimant, the same R10m, the same theft and the same historical events,’ Judge of appeal Ashton Schippers said.

Full report in The Mercury

Judgment