By Barbara Whittle

In July this year the Law Society of South Africa submitted two options to the Justice Department for an increase in the monetary jurisdiction of the magistrates’ civil district and regional courts, one from the Cape Law Society (CLS) and a second from the KwaZulu-Natal Law Society (KZNLS).

The CLS indicated that:

• The jurisdiction of the district courts should be increased to R 300 000 and that of the regional courts to R 1 million.
• The range of the regional courts’ jurisdiction should be from R 300 001 to R 1 million, and not for claims that would ordinarily fall within the district courts’ monetary jurisdiction, unless two claims are instituted in the same summons where at least one of the claims is within the regional courts’ jurisdiction. In such a case, the court should then have jurisdiction to consider a claim that falls within the district courts’ monetary jurisdiction.
• The tariff of fees should be increased in order to compensate attorneys adequately for the increase in responsibility when dealing with matters of a high claim value in the regional court.

The KZNLS was of the view that the monetary jurisdiction of the district courts should be increased only to R 200 000 and that of the regional civil courts should range from R 200 001 to R 400 000. However, the KZNLS suggested that if there were a counter-claim below the lowest amount of the regional courts’ jurisdiction (a counter-claim that falls within the jurisdiction of the district court) then the regional court should have jurisdiction to hear that counter-claim.

The KZNLS’s rationale was that, if the regional courts have jurisdiction in claims in convention to R 400 000, there would be a tendency for such actions to be instituted in the regional courts rather than in the district courts, which have jurisdiction over the persons of the defendants. They would have to travel further to the regional courts as they are situated in the larger towns and cities, making litigation more costly. They argue that this would also reduce the work load for country attorneys.

However, this would not necessarily be the case, given the fact that the High Court already has this jurisdiction and it has divisions in the larger cities. With the increase in establishment of regional courts around the country, this will have the positive effect of having claims instituted in courts closer to the areas in which defendants reside and the cost of litigating would be reduced.

• The full submissions by the LSSA can be accessed on the LSSA’s website at LSSA.org.za under ‘Legal practitioners’ LSSA comments in the left-hand navigation bar.

Compiled by Barbara Whittle, communications manager, Law Society of South Africa, barbara@lssa.org.za

This article was first published in De Rebus in 2013 (Sept) DR 13.