The Labour Court has ordered lawyers to pay back legal fees charged to their clients and not to charge further legal fees for work done. The order includes the attorneys and the advocates who were involved in the matter.
Sethene AJ (am acting judge), in a scathing judgment, began with a quote from the Victoria University of Wellington Law Review:
“Where a hopeless case is brought with the assistance of the advocate, the advocate must either be bringing it in the knowledge that it is hopeless (and therefore assisting in an abuse), or believing that it is not hopeless (therefore incompetent), or not caring whether it is hopeless (and therefore guilty of recklessness or gross negligence). In any of these cases, the conduct of an advocate warrants action being taken by the court.”
The judgment was delivered in relation to 2 urgent applications which were characterized by lawyers prosecuting the cases in a sloppy manner and both of which, according to the court, were “hopeless in law and facts”.
Both urgent applications were struck from the roll.
The judgment is the latest in a series of judgments from the Labour Court in which legal practitioners and unions were criticised for the manner in which they ran cases.
Whilst the court in previous cases ordered that the representatives pay the opposing side’s legal fees, the judgment of Sethene AJ went further by ordering the lawyers not to charge their own clients any fees for the work done.
Read a copy of the judgment here:
unisadjcjudgment7june2023
This is a landmark ruling. Legal reps will now have to think before the can bring legal issues t0 courts, Innocent clients get swindled of their hard earned cash by frivolous lawyers who want to make quick and easy bucks.
Kudos to the Judge for bringing this issue under the legal microspcope.