Don’t blame RAF boss, court hears

APPEAL: LEGAL COST NOT PERSONAL Chaos inherited from previous management.

The Road Accident Fund (RAF) has applied for leave to appeal the Mpumalanga High Court ruling ordering the CEO, Collins Letsoalo, and his board members to personally pay legal costs, blaming the previous management for the chaos at the entity.

The RAF top bosses were slapped with personal costs orders last week for failing to do their job in two of the many cases before the high court.

Judge President Francis Legodi’s no-holds-barred judgment slated the RAF for failing to comply with court directives, and the removal of its panel of lawyers in 2020 without a contingency plan.

The court questioned the entity’s ability to run its affairs as its cases clogged up the court roll, leading to long-winded and costly litigations for claimants.

In the appeal application, the RAF argues Legodi made a mistake in finding that its board and Letsoalo failed in doing their job because they were not aware of litigation by two of the claimants, whose cases were morphed together by the court to try speed up processes.

“Neither the second, nor the third applicant [Letsoalo and the board] were appointed in their positions at the time when the litigation commenced,” read the appeal papers.

“The court erred by applying the principles of vicarious liability in order to justify the judgment and order against second and third applicants.”

Regarding the removal of the team of attorneys, the applicants said they were never going to allow attorneys whose term had expired and “acted contrary to the interests of RAF” to continue with their services.

The entity said the lawyers’ mandate ended in May 2020, after which they were expected to hand over the files. There was no trust between the two parties, they said.

“The situation had raised serious questions as to whether a relationship of attorney and client could meaningfully come into existence again under such a toxic environment caused by fraud, maladministration and corruption.

“The risk of irreparable harm is being compelled to contract with panel of attorneys for legal services where no relationship of trust or respect existed, must be significant,” the papers stated.

The current board was appointed in 2019.

Letsoalo’s appointment followed in 2020, after he left the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa).

Their lawyers argue that they cannot be held liable for the chaos and fraud and corruption under the previous RAF management.

Furthermore, no other board or CEO could turn around the transport entity, leaving Letsoalo and his team with no choice but to take urgent drastic steps to prevent the entity from total collapse, the RAF argued in the papers.

The entity falls under the department of transport.