Businessman fined R70,000 for email tirade about top Joburg attorney

A wealthy 63-year-old businessman who unleashed an abusive email attack on a senior Johannesburg attorney in defiance of an interdict has been fined R70,000.

Andre Loots, from Montagu in the Western Cape, also faces a 30-day prison sentence for contempt of court if he resumes an attack that a judge said was underpinned by “malice, vindictiveness, vexatiousness, and unbridled intention to do as much harm to the reputation and dignity of the [lawyer] and to cause him as much distress as possible”.

In her October 28 ruling, Judge Ingrid Opperman said Loots “has shown time and again that he struggles to heed sound advice” to halt his email campaign against the attorney, who may not be named.

The Johannesburg high court judge rejected arguments by the attorney's counsel that Loots should be treated like Jacob Zuma, who was imprisoned by the Constitutional Court for contempt of court.

In that case, she said, “a former president of the republic disobeyed an order of the Constitutional Court and had launched sacrilegious attacks on the Constitutional Court”.

Loots, meanwhile, said rude things about the attorney in emails sent to only a handful of people. “The context is one of intimate relationships where passions do run high,” she said.

“This is not a case of a national leader defying a subpoena from a commission of inquiry into a matter of national importance.”

The attorney went to court in June and won an interdict preventing Loots emailing or calling him, making allegations about “personal, professional or fiscal impropriety”, trying to have him arrested or harassing him.

But between August 27 and September 13 the businessman sent 18 emails to the attorney's lawyer, copying his own lawyer, the attorney's estranged wife and her lawyers. In them, he made a string of allegations about the attorney and directed threats at him, said Opperman.

The attorney filed a contempt of court application but even Loots' responding affidavit continued the attacks.

It said: “If 'one' can bully, intimidate, harass, physically abuse, emotionally abuse and financially abuse women to a point where they have to get protection orders against you and where they have to employ bodyguards for their own safety, 'one' does not qualify as being a good person.”

Opperman said Loots had intentionally set out to harm the reputation of the attorney, “who has spent over 40 years building his professional reputation — one he contends is of excellence and unimpeachable integrity”.

She added: "[Loots'] behaviour is so blatantly unreasonable and his attacks on the [attorney's] reputation and dignity are so scurrilous that this court can and does reject his bald denial of wilfulness and mala fides out of hand.”

This was borne out, said Opperman, by emails accusing the attorney of being “a sad piece of sh*t” and a “serial woman abuser”, and someone who “has not had a passing relationship with honesty in his entire life”.

Loots' conduct “goes beyond a mere disregard of the court order and constitutes a deliberate and intentional violation of this court’s dignity, repute and authority”, she said.

She quoted an email from the attorney's lawyer to Loots' lawyer on September 29 which said: “It would appear that your client has no regard whatsoever for the rule of law, apparently believing that an order of the high court means nothing and he is entitled to breach it as and when and how he pleases.

“Even the pending contempt application appears not to concern him in the slightest (indeed, he labels it 'pathetic, boring and madness'), causing him only to escalate his threats and intimidation.

“You have presumably advised your client that contempt of a high court order is no small thing, and that our client's application would best be met with humility and not the kind of arrogance which your client presently displays.”

Despite this, said Opperman, Loots' answering affidavit had a headline in bold and capital letters that said “APPLICANT’S BULLYING AND ABUSIVE NATURE”. The judge added: “It is hard to imagine more defiant drafting.”

In response, the attorney asked the court to send Loots to prison without the option of a fine, but Opperman said “this is not an exceptional case” justifying such an approach.

The judge said Loots had not been helpful in disclosing his wealth but the fact that he transferred more than R200,000 from his business to the attorney's estranged wife in June showed he had access to funds. The nature of the relationship between Loots and the estranged wife is not made clear in the judgment.

But Opperman said his conduct merited a punitive costs order on top of the fine. Loots' 30-day prison sentence was suspended for a year.

TimesLIVE