Lawyers face probe for attack on judges

Two lawyers have been reported to the Johannesburg Bar Council and the Law Society following a "baseless and scurrilous" attack on judges of the Supreme Court of Appeal.

The Constitutional Court ordered the action against Johannesburg-based advocate Mark Nowitz and his brother, attorney Len Nowitz.

The council and the society are to examine whether the brothers committed a breach of ethics in the course of a lawsuit brought against the Post Office.

The Nowitz legal team won a R60- million claim for Brian de Lacy and Barry Beadon in a case in the High Court in Johannesburg concerning alleged tender irregularities.

De Lacy and Beadon had sued after their company, Cornastone e-Commerce Services, lost out on a contract for a pension payment system in North West.

In 2009, the appeal court overturned the verdict in a unanimous judgment handed down by Judge Robert Nugent.

The lawyers fought the decision in the Constitutional Court, singling out Judge Nugent in their allegations of "gross incompetence and misconduct".

They cited 114 instances in the appeal court judgment which they said demonstrated a "deliberate attempt in certain instances to justify the award of the tender" to a competitor.

"This is not a matter relating to 'findings of fact' but rather a matter where a judgment clearly has not been delivered impartially," the papers read.

But on the day of the Constitutional Court hearing this year, Mark Nowitz read out a letter withdrawing the attack on the appeal court judges.

Ordering the bar council probe, Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke said the Nowitzes owed "an unqualified apology to the judges".