Legal Articles and Guides

Kenneth Makate’s ‘Please Call Me’ case has disintegrated into a clash between lawyers and the investors who financed his case, says a Mail & Guardian report. Raining Men Trade – the company nominated to enter into the contract with Makate – has filed papers for an urgent interdict to block Vodacom from paying Makate a cent. Alternatively, the company wants Vodacom to pay him no more than 50% of whatever amount is agreed to during the current settlement negotiations until it is reinstated and included in the settlement discussions. The directors of Raining Men Trade claim it was appointed as the legally nominated firm for the contract with Makate – and that this was done in line with his initial deal with the litigation-funding firm Sterling Rand, which picked up his case in 2013. 

The Constitutional Court has ruled against a US widow who lodged a R24m damages claim against owners of a shark cage diving operation after her husband drowned when the diving boat he was on capsized off Kleinbaai in 2008. Sarah Tallman’s application for leave to appeal a SCA decision exonerating a shark cage diving operation of negligence, resulting in her husband’s death, has been dismissed with costs, says a Cape Times report. Her husband Chris was one of three tourists who drowned after a White Shark Projects catamaran-hull ski boat, Shark Team, capsized after being hit by a wave off Kleinbaai on 13 April, 2008. Tallman instituted a R24m claim against skipper Grant Tuckett and White Shark Projects. In 2014, Western Cape High Court Judge Alec Freud found Tuckett and White Shark Projects to be liable on the basis that they were negligent, but the SCA overturned the ruling, deciding the experienced Tuckett could not have anticipated the ‘freak wave’ that did the damage.  

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.

In a move seen by the doubters as the NPA being drawn into President Jacob Zuma's 'Stalingrad strategy' to delay as long as possible the day when he will have to face up to corruption charges, National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) Shaun Abrahams did what everybody who has been following the matter expected he would do – appeal the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) ruling setting aside the 'irrational' decision to drop the charges, reports Legalbrief. Interestingly, he left it to the last legal minute, as did Zuma, as they announced their decisions to seek the court's permission to challenge the ruling of a three-judge Bench in favour of the DA's motion to reinstate the long-ago abandoned 783 corruption and fraud charges the President may yet avoid having to face. Zuma was a winner in another NPA matter in the Western Cape High Court this week, but whether that signals a change in fortunes remains to be seen. We'll know more on June 10 when the High Court will hear the NPA and Zuma's applications for leave to appeal.  

As he bowed out of office last Friday, Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke said the judiciary was safe in the hands of Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, notes a BDlive report. At Moseneke’s farewell function at the Constitutional Court, both spoke of the importance of putting the institution first – in what the report describes as an unprecedented public affirmation of the unity of the judiciary and its highest court. Moseneke said despite their ‘initial discomfort’, he and Mogoeng had ‘found each other’. ‘Each time there was a storm that swelled around this institution, you and me stood firm,’ he said to Mogoeng. ‘I can say without any fear of contradiction that your integrity has been shown to be beyond question.’ However, Moseneke warn ed Mogoeng that there was ‘much turbulence ahead’. However a ‘good pilot’ navigated that kind of turbulence and Mogoeng had his full confidence, he said.