Legal Articles and Guides

The KZN Department of Health appears to be heading for another legal showdown when the head of surgery from the strife-torn Ngwelazana Hospital returns to his job, which has already been given to someone else, suggests a Sunday Tribune report.

A matter due to come before the KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) this month represents a test case for Health Department claims that public hospitals are as good as private ones, notes Legalbrief. Mbali Nzimande, whose five-year-old daughter was born with cerebral palsy, secured costly professional help after she won a legal battle against the KZN Health Department in June last year.

The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) has heard that it was not the fault of the 33 children who were on the brink of being stateless that they did not have birth certificates. A Pretoria News report says the good news for the children is that Home Affairs has agreed to register the 33 SA children who were on the brink of not being considered as a national by any state.

A finding by the Health Professions Council (HPCSA) that a Port Elizabeth heart surgeon should be allowed to work only under supervision after he watched sport on TV during surgery has been set aside by the Eastern Cape High Court (Port Elizabeth), according to a report in The Herald.

North West surgeon Dr Samuel Smith has been vindicated by a Supreme Court of Appeal ruling which dismissed a patient’s legal challenge that he did not explain surgery options available to her, and was therefore responsible for the pain she had experienced.

Athletics SA has issued a rebuke of the International Association of Athletics Federations and says the body failed to prove its case in the appeal hearing of double Olympic champion Caster Semenya.

A car crash victim – who alleges he was told to walk home by Gauteng hospital staff who believed he was not injured – is suing the Health Department for R2m damages after it emerged he had a spinal injury.

The Western Cape High Court has granted the City of Cape Town an interdict with costs against preventing the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival Association (CTMCA), the Cape Cultural Carnival and Events Committee (CCCEC) and their member troupes from hosting events at any City-owned facility without complying with applicable regulations and the law first.

A Durban-based private hospital group is in a legal war with 13 medical aid schemes that it claims are refusing to pay R27m it is owed for hundreds of ‘pre-authorised’ hospital visits, which, if not resolved could result in patients being sued for the money, notes a Business Day report.

A Gauteng doctor implicated in a R22m fraud case involving patients has secured a minor legal victory against the Health Professions Council (HPCSA) by arguing it did not have jurisdiction to find him guilty of professional misconduct, says a Times Select report.

The National Health Department has moved to distance itself from an 'unconstitutional' instruction that state hospitals should turn away foreigners unless they pay in full. The circular, which the department has blamed on a junior official, will be withdrawn today, allegedly as a result of questions posed by the Sunday Times and provincial health officials in the Western Cape.

Most medical schemes signed an industry charter on Friday to combat ‘fraud, waste and abuse’ in the private health sector said to total as much as R30bn a year, but the country’s doctors, hospitals and other service providers declined to sign.

An unplanned pregnancy and birth could cost a local gynaecologist close to R3m, says a Weekend Witness report. Dr Kesavan Dhavaraj is being sued for this amount by Celestie Row and her husband, Wellington, after she conceived a baby believing her gynaecologist had performed the tubal ligation she had requested.

The KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) has granted a temporary order in favour of a youth care facility, ordering the provincial Department of Social Development to return 197 children who were removed from its premises. The KZN Christian Social Services, the subject of an investigation into racism and physical abuse allegations, turned to the courts after department officials, accompanied by police, last week removed the children from the facility's Morester Children's Home in Ladysmith, Morester Children's Home in Newcastle and Home Meah in Newcastle, reports TimesLIVE.

While the High Court conceded that a rapist was intelligent, in its sentencing it showed it did not think his defence was particularly clever. A TimesLIVE report says HIV-positive Selwyn van Rooyen (44) argued that it was not ‘the worst kind of rape’ because his victim did not contract HIV.