WHAT HAS HAPPENED SO FAR

If you claim successfully from the Road Accident Fund (RAF), your medical scheme is entitled to claim back from you the accidentrelated expenses that it paid on your behalf. This is in terms of the common law principle of subrogation.

Discovery Health Medical Scheme’s administrator attempted to recover money from a member who did not reimburse the scheme after the RAF had paid him out for his medical expenses. The member was a client of Bobroff & Partners. Discovery Health was alerted to the fact that Bobroff & Partners was regularly deducting, from RAF payouts, fees that exceeded those permitted by the Contingency Fees Act.

Discovery Health paid the lawyer’s fees of another member and his wife, Matthew and Jennifer Graham, who complained to the Law Society of the Northern Provinces about Ronald Bobroff’s fees. Months after the complaint had been laid but had not been heard, the Grahams lodged an application in the High Court to have Ronald Bobroff and his son, Darren, struck off the roll of attorneys. Ronald Bobroff has filed a counter-application to have the case dismissed. The cases are due to be heard in January.

In the meantime, Juanne de la Guerre, a former client of Bobroff & Partners, took advice from Anthony Millar, of law firm Norman Berger and Partners, and instituted a case against Bobroff & Partners to recover fees that exceeded the Contingency Fees Act. The South African Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (Saapil) then lodged a counter-application to have common law contingency fee agreements declared lawful.

The cases were heard together, and in February the North Gauteng High Court ruled in favour of De la Guerre and against Saapil.

Millar is also acting for another former client of Bobroff & Partners, Antony de Pontes, who became a quadriplegic after a motor vehicle accident. De Pontes’s application in the South Gauteng High Court, lodged by his curator, John Bitter, seeks the return of the R2.1 million that he alleges Bobroff & Partners retained out of a payout of R6.1 million from the RAF.

Bobroff & Partners lodged a counter-application against Bitter’s appointment. This counterapplication was dismissed with costs late last month but is now being appealed by Bobroff.

Bobroff alleges that Discovery Health and the RAF are engaged in a “vendetta” against his firm, because he has pointed out that Discovery has not informed members of its right to recover expenses and because he has objected to changes to the RAF.