Legal Articles and Guides
Private property developers at the centre of a legal dispute expected the court to ‘get blood out of a stone’ when they asked that Bromwell Street residents in Woodstock – who are facing eviction – pay their legal costs. A Cape Times report says the lawyer for Woodstock Hub had asked the Western Cape High Court yesterday to order the residents to pay for the legal fees.
Going through a list of our files the other day, I realised that our firm dealt with 99 eviction matters in the last year. Some instructions related to residential evictions, some related to farms. The majority of our instructions relate to commercial property. I’ve seen commercial property management strategies that work, and I’ve seen strategies flop. One of our clients has reduced their tenant default rate to one percent, while another company we worked with has a default rate ten times that, at ten percent.
Section 4 (6) of PIE states that if an unlawful occupier has occupied the land in question for less than six months at the time when the proceedings are initiated, a court may grant an order for eviction if it is of the opinion that it is just and equitable to do so, after considering all the relevant circumstances, including the rights and needs of the elderly, children, disabled persons and households headed by women.
Landlords are obliged to notify their tenant of the upcoming expiration of the lease agreement. This obligation will arise not more than 80 but not less than 40 business days before the expiry date of the fixed term agreement.
In this reported judgment, Le Roux Attorneys successfully represented Applethwaite Farm in evicting Mr Patrick Tshongweni and all those holding title under him from the farm in terms of Section 4 of the Prevention of Illegal Eviction From and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act No 19 of 1998 (‘PIE).
Section 4(7) of the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act (PIE) states that if an unlawful occupier has occupied land for more than six months at the time when eviction proceedings are initiated, a court may grant an order for eviction if it is of the opinion that it is just and equitable to do so. Relevant factors which must be taken into account are the availability of alternative accommodation and the rights and needs of the elderly, children, disabled persons and households headed by women.
Cape Town's Bromwell Street families have filed an urgent application before the Western Cape High Court to compel the city to meaningfully engage and provide them with temporary alternative accommodation, says a Cape Times report. The families face eviction on Monday, and the application is likely to be heard on Friday.
Did you know that even as the owner of a house, you could still be evicted from it as an “unlawful occupier”? That could happen if, to take one example from a recent Supreme Court of Appeal matter, you give someone else a right of habitation. But why, you may ask, would you do that?
The Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock, Cape Town, has distanced itself from a court order granted to evict 28 families from a row of houses in nearby Bromwell Street, says a Cape Times report. One of the directors of Standard Mills, which owns the Old Biscuit Mill, said the company had no interest in evicting families from Woodstock and that the action went against their ethos.
The owner of a hijacked Durban building is preparing a "substantial" damages claim against the eThekwini Municipality which continues to ignore High Court orders that it provide alternative accommodation for the illegal occupants, says a report in The Mercury.
Suspended SAA chief commercial officer Sylvain Bosc wants his deposit back after renting a R9.3m house in Hyde Park, Johannesburg, but homeowner Yoni Titi says the money is needed to replace or fix everything the Frenchman and his family allegedly broke while living in the mansion, according to a Sunday Times report.
The Constitutional Court held yesterday (Thursday) that a woman who stayed on a farm where her husband worked was an occupier in her own right under the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (ESTA), notes a BDlive report. In this case‚ Elsie Klaase was evicted with her husband‚ Jan Klaase‚ after the employer terminated his employment. Klaase had been employed at the Noordhoek farm since 1972‚ and stayed there with his wife‚ their three children and three grandchildren in a cottage. He was evicted in 2014 following a charge laid against him by the farmer for absconding and absence from work. His employers told him his right to occupy the premises was terminated as it was dependent on his continued employment. The majority of the Constitutional Court‚ in a judgment by acting Justice Elias Matojane‚ said Mrs Klaase had established that she was an occupier and her right of residence was not lawfully terminated.
The Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) ruled recently that the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality could not cut off power to a tenant with a utility bill in its own name to force the landlord to pay outstanding rates, says a report in The Mercury. The court was ruling on an appeal in a dispute between the Ekurhuleni Municipality and Anzotrax, which trades as Topbet Germiston. The court was so annoyed by the metro’s litigation that it awarded a punitive costs order against it. Local legal experts said, however, this did not mean that the decision was binding on other provincial High Courts. They said it could only have a national implication once it went to the SCA or the Constitutional Court. In the case, the municipality had claimed it was allowed to disconnect in accordance with its cred it and debit control policies, which allowed it to consolidate separate accounts on the basis of the owner and tenant being jointly and severally liable for payment of all debts owing in respect of the property. The judges felt that this could ‘lead to manifest absurdities and could never have been the intention of the lawgivers’. They found there was ‘no legal basis’ for holding an owner or landlord and a tenant liable in regard to the owner’s rates and taxes. A punitive costs order was imposed on Ekurhuleni.
“His demeanour at this time was highly aggressive, flying his arms about and it was clear to me that he had to prevent himself from lashing out at me physically†(Trustee quoted in judgment below) The irrational, aggressive and disruptive “Nightmare Next Door†owner is regrettably a well-known and much-disliked feature of all too many residential complexes. He or she makes trouble at every opportunity, attacking other owners and the body corporate"s trustees with equal abandon.
Section 6(2)(d) of the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (ESTA) grants occupiers the right to “family life in accordance with the culture of that family.” In practice, this means that a farm labourer may insist that his wife and minor children reside with him in his accommodation on the farm.
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