Chief justice Raymond Zondo says the increased caseload of the Constitutional Court means the court must — where possible — adopt a shorter and maybe simpler route to the determination of some of the matters that come before it.
The court’s caseload increased after the passing of the 17th Constitution Amendment Act in 2012. The amendment expanded the court’s jurisdiction to include non-constitutional matters that raise arguable points of law of general public importance.
Zondo made this comment in a judgment passed on Tuesday where the majority set aside a judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) and remitted the matter to the high court.
The issue on appeal before the apex court was whether, if a person was arrested and detained by the police and charged and initially institutes an action for damages for unlawful arrest and detention, he or she may later institute a separate action for malicious prosecution or should include all claims in a single action.
In this case, the claimant instituted an action in the high court for unlawful arrest and detention first and later instituted, while the first action was pending, a separate action for malicious prosecution.
When the case came before the high court, the minister of police objected to the claim for malicious prosecution on the basis that, since it was based on the same events as the first action, the claimant was obliged to have included it in the first action and could not institute a separate action for it.
The minister relied on the “once and for all” rule in terms of which a claimant is obliged to claim all damages arising from one action in a single action.
The high court upheld the objection by the minister. The claimant appealed to the SCA, which also dismissed his application.
In the appeal before the Constitutional Court, the majority judgment — penned by acting justice Tati Makgoka — said both the high court and the SCA recognised that there was not one cause of action in respect of the applicant’s claims, but two.
In spite of this, they held that, because they arose from the same set of facts, the claims based on the two causes of action should have been instituted in one action.
Makgoka said in this case, there were two causes of action and the “once and for all” rule did not apply.
In a judgment where he agreed with the conclusion reached by Makgoka, the chief justice described the process to deal with the increased workload.
He said the court decided that in some cases where it has heard oral argument in a matter, it will not write a judgment because the judgment will do nothing more than to record the same facts which have been recorded in previous judgments of other courts and state the law as already stated in those judgments and uphold the appeal.
“We have decided that in such cases we could issue a statement containing a paragraph or two in which we dismiss the appeal for substantially the same reasons as those given by, for example, the Supreme Court of Appeal or the high court,” Zondo said.
He said the present case was not such a case.
“Nevertheless, it is a case in which I prefer a shorter and, in my view, simpler approach to dispose of the matter.”
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