Effective from 22 April 2025, the Office of the Judge President of the Gauteng Division of the High Court issued a Directive introducing mandatory mediation in the Gauteng Division, together with a Mediation Protocol. The Directive provides that mediation in civil trials is now mandatory in the Division.
The effect on trial dates
In the transitional
The owners of a building in which aluminium composite panels were installed is seeking compensation for loss or damage arising from the manufacturer supplier of those panels including the costs of removing the panels and remediating damage caused by affixing the panels to the building.
In this judgment the question was whether the insurer’s policy
“Double insurance arises where the same party is insured with two (or, as is said to be the position in this case, more) insurers in respect of the same interest on the same subject matter against the same risks. It is common ground that, subject to the meaning of the other insurance clause in the
Part 1 and Part 2 discuss the insured’s claim for property damage indemnity resulting from incorporation of defective aluminium plate in customer’s products.
The insurers CGU also unsuccessfully argued the application of the products recall exclusion in the policy. The policy excludes insurer’s liability for:
“6.14 Products and Work Performed
6.14.2 the cost of or damages
The primary policy dispute in the appeal judgment in Insurance Australia Limited t/as CGU Insurance V Capral Limited is discussed in our previous blog here.
The insurers also argued that the installation of the defective plate did not damage the property at all and it in fact “improved” the vessel, so the claim must
The 276 paragraphs of the appeal judgment in Insurance Australia Limited t/as CGU Insurance V Capral Limited contains a very detailed and useful review of multiple jurisdictions approach to the meaning of property damage within property, general products and liability policies including Australia, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
The insured claimed under
A new schedule of hazardous substances has been published under the Hazardous Substances Act of 1973 which will come into effect on 4 October 2025.
The schedule lists industrial substances under the Rotterdam Convention and their use in South Africa, mercury and mercury compounds under the Minamata Convention, and other industrial substances or mixture of substances
Is the duty of care doctrine foreign to the principles of Roman Dutch law?
Neethling and Potgieter, referred to in this recent Supreme Court of Appeal judgment, say that the doctrine “is an unnecessary and round about way of establishing what may be established directly by means of the reasonable person test for negligence, i.e.
In 2024, the NRS Association published a Code of Practice for load reduction practices, system restoration practices, and critical load and essential load requirements under power system emergencies (link).
Anyone commercially interested in loadshedding and grid failure (such as non-life insurers) will gain from looking at the document, even if not the whole
In March 2025 the Supreme Court of Appeal reaffirmed that if the exercise of a power depends on the existence of a state of affairs as a jurisdictional fact, in the absence of a clear expression to the contrary, the person exercising that power will not likely be found to be the only judge as