The high court in Pretoria has granted the Road Accident Fund (RAF) leave to appeal against part of a recent judgment scrapping the agency’s attempts to impose stringent new requirements on claimants.
The RAF is a statutory body charged with compensating victims of road traffic accidents, who can claim for medical expenses and loss of earnings. It is funded by the fuel levy now at R2.18 per litre of fuel.
In March, the high court upheld an application by the Legal Practitioners Indemnity Insurance Fund (LPIIF) and found the RAF had overstepped its authority by issuing a board notice that paved the way for a new RAF1 claim form gazetted by the transport minister. It ruled that the board notice and RAF1 claim form were unlawful and set them aside.
At that stage the court ordered the transport minister to devise a new claim form within six months, saying accident victims who did not meet the stringent new paperwork requirements could resubmit their claims using the much simpler RAF1 form used since 2008.
That ruling should have given tens of thousands of unsuccessful claimants a second chance to secure compensation for injuries. But the RAF sought leave to appeal, and did not allow claimants to use the old RAF1 form.
A full bench of the Pretoria high court on Monday upheld part of the RAF’s application for leave to appeal, restricting it to the question of the extent of its legal powers.
Judge Lettie Molopa-Sethosa said the court did not believe the RAF had a reasonable chance of success but the matter overlapped with a similar case that the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) had yet to consider and it was important to clarify this aspect of the law.
The RAF has separately asked the SCA to grant it leave to appeal against a Pretoria high court ruling in November 2023, which upheld an application brought by road traffic accident victim Lesedi Mautla and eight other applications that scrapped an earlier board notice and accompanying RAF1 form.
Its initial application for leave to appeal in this matter was dismissed by the high court as was its application to the SCA for special leave to appeal, which it then asked the SCA judge president to reconsider. The question of whether the RAF is entitled to appeal has been referred for oral argument before two SCA judges, but a date for the hearing has not yet been set.
“We do not think there is a reasonable prospect that an appellate court would reverse our judgment as to the powers at issue and the basis upon which we determined that their exercise was unlawful. But we think there are reasons of public policy as to why the SCA should be the ultimate arbiter of the matter, given the powers at issue in both the Mautla and the present matter,” wrote Molopa-Sethosa, with the concurrence of judges David Unterhalter and Mandlenkosi Motha.
“Legal certainty in this field is of paramount importance. The subject matter of the litigation affects many people, including many who are disadvantaged,” she said.
She also criticised the RAF for using its application for leave to appeal the March ruling to avoid complying with the court’s instruction to revert to processing claims in a simpler way.
RAF spokesperson McIntosh Polela said the fund was studying the judgment.
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