Legal Articles and Guides

A cloud-based court filing system could replace the ‘costly‚ cumbersome’ current practice, according to Litigator MD Bruce Henderson‚ who said ‘court rules have been amended to permit electronic service of litigation documents and that attorneys must embrace digital systems’. According to a TimesLIVE report, Henderson also noted that‚ ‘in 2014‚ Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng called for the introduction of an electronic court filing system‚ to increase efficiencies‚ reduce costs and mitigate against the lost and stolen court documents’. An obstacle to this‚ he said‚ was ‘concerns as to the manner in which the service of documents is verified’.

The growing threat of cybercrime is set to change the face of business and spark ethical dilemmas for company directors, according to BDO South Africa. A Moneyweb report notes that Graham Croock, director of IT audit and risk at BDO, speaking at the launch of the firm’s Cyber and Forensic Laboratory in Johannesburg, said the constitution of company boards has to change in order to mitigate risk, with engineers and science graduates likely to run companies of the future. ‘The old days of having accountants, auditors and lawyers sitting on boards, risk committees, audit committees is going to have to change. What you’re going to have to do is have a lot of younger, tech-smart people on those boards,’ he said.

The 11 public works officials facing disciplinary charges in connection with the R246m upgrades to the President’s Nkandla home will appeal the KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) decision that granted the media access to the hearings, says a City Press report. Claude Naiker, spokesperson for the Public Servants Association, which is representing the 11 officials known in the media as the Nkandla ‘scapegoats’, confirmed the appeal would go ahead. Naiker said that they had studied the High Court’s judgment and believed there were grounds for appeal because ‘not much is said about the rights of workers’.

The Gupta and Zuma-owned Tegeta Resources and Exploration is prepared to fight Eskom over a R2bn fine it inherited from Glencore when it bought Optimum coal mine this year, according to a Fin24 report. ‘We’re going to fight it, based on the evidence we’ve been shown now. So it’s going to be a wonderful fight between us and Eskom,’ Oakbay Investments CEO Nazeem Howa told Carte Blanche in a programme aired on Sunday. Eskom confirmed last week that its claim against Optimum for R2bn relating to out of specification coal delivered remained in place. 

SA’s chronically delayed digital migration project is in legal limbo again after Communications Minister Faith Muthambi applied this week for leave to appeal against a judgment setting aside her policy on the matter. The Mercury reports this means the project to convert terrestrial television broadcasting in the country from an analogue signal to a digital one is likely to take even longer. Muthambi’s decision to prevent the government decoders – which are to be provided free to 5m poor households – from being able to receive an encrypted signal was set aside in the SCA last month, following an application by e.tv.