03 Jun 2015

The Registrar and Master of the High Court, Mr Michael Motlhabi, sayd the Administration of Justice (AoJ) has taken a robust and effective action on the issue of forum shopping.

Answering a concern raised by a member of Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Mr Dithapelo Keorapetse, when presenting at the ongoing session on June 1, Mr Motlhabi said the system whereby lawyers used to fish for a particular judge of their choice by either registering a case for several times and withdrawing it until it reached that particular judge had been brought to finality.

He said though there could be some element of forum shopping in existence, he did not think it was as pronounced as it used to be because the High Court had introduced a rule, which dictated that the lawyer should first address the judge whom the case would be before, indicating his reasons for his withdrawal of the matter.

Failure to advance sound and convincing reasons, he said will not lead to the lawyer being given the opportunity to withdraw the matter and then at some later stage reinstate the matter afresh.

On the issue of delayed judgements, he said the Chief Justice has been addressing this issue, noting that even during this year’s Legal Year he touched on it. 

He however said where the judgement is unnecessarily taking long to be delivered it should be drawn to the attention of the Chief Justice so that the issue could be administratively resolved.

At the moment, he said, the turnaround period for the release of judgement is three years taking into consideration the time when the case was first registered with the court. 

He however said some cases usually take much shorter time because cases differ depending on their nature and circumstances.

On other issues, Mr Motlhabi said the Administration of Justice was currently developing some measures to regulate and bring wayward deputy sheriffs into line as a response to public outcry on their behaviour.

He also acknowledged that conditions of magistrates will continue to be improved, noting that the department was quite aware of such a need and have recently taken an exercise to compile data on their needs.

Mr Motlhabi further said his department was busy trying all possible measures to reach out all those who have not collected their child maintenance and the exercise is done in partnership with Accountant General and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural development. Ends