A recent decision of the High Court has clarified the application of prescription in the context of claims for outstanding professional fees between legal practitioners. The defendant attorneys unsuccessfully raised a special plea of prescription, contending that the plaintiff advocate’s claims on its invoices, some of which dated back several years, had prescribed because summons
A defendant who signed surety for a bank raised a number of unsuccessful defences including prescription. The bank granted the principal debtor an overdraft facility which the client failed to reduce within the credit limit as required in December 2018. Summons was issued in July 2024. The court dismissed the prescription defence because it was
This Supreme Court of Appeal judgment grappled with whether the claim involving latent and undisclosed defects discovered sometime after the claimant had purchased the property, had prescribed.
It is well established law that the debt becomes due, and prescription begins to run, when the creditor has the minimum facts necessary to institute action.
The running
In 2022, in a decision handed down by the KwaZulu Natal High Court, held in Pietermaritzburg it was made clear that the failure by a pension fund to timeously collect arrear pension contributions from recalcitrant employers, will result in the fund not having a claim against the employer where the defence of prescription is raised
In this judgment, the policyholder unsuccessfully argued that the Prescription Act did not apply because the insurer was confined to the time-bar clause in the policy which provided for a period of prescription from the date of the rejection of the claim and because no rejection was ever issued, the clause could not be
The Supreme Court of Appeal held that where one party to a contract repudiates the contract by expressing an intention not to be bound by their obligations, extinctive prescription to defeat a claim for damages or performance runs from the date that the other party accepts the repudiation and cancels the contract. A contract between
The Supreme Court of Appeal, not surprisingly, found that a maintenance order made by a court is subject to a 30 year prescription period because it is a “judgment debt” for the purposes of section 11(a)(ii) of the Prescription Act of 1969.
The appellant husband had an unpaid maintenance debt of over R3.5 million as
In finding that the Road Accident Fund Act three year extinctive prescription period (with some exceptions) did not apply to the claimant who had become a person of unsound mind because of the motor accident, the Constitutional Court applied the impossibility principle (lex non cogit ad impossibilia). It was held that the claimant’s
In a recent judgment the supreme court of appeal, unsurprisingly, reaffirmed that a favourable result of the prosecution for the claimant remains a requirement for a complete cause of action in a claim based on malicious proceedings.
In terms of the Prescription Act a debt is due, owing and payable when the creditor, that is
A healthcare practitioner, who is the subject of malicious HPCSA proceedings, may institute a damages claim for malicious prosecution against the complainant who initiated the proceedings within three years from the date the HPCSA informs the practitioner of its decision to dismiss the complaint.
The claim only arises, and prescription starts to run, from the