Association drops appeal against tobacco sales ruling
THE Fair Trade Independent Tobacco Association (Fita) says it has agreed to withdraw its pending appeal before the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) against a ruling upholding the ban on tobacco sales, nine days after the prohibition was lifted.
According to an agreement reached through its lawyers with Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, she would invite public consultation should the government again see a need to ban tobacco sales as part of the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The minister did not undertake to invite input from Fita specifically, nor did she concede her position that the initial decision to ban the sale of tobacco was sound in law.
The association attacked the legality of the prohibition in its initial, failed, high court challenge and again in papers to the SCA.
Fita entered into negotiations with the government last Monday, as Dlamini Zuma gazetted the lifting of the ban.
The association had advanced in its founding affidavit to the SCA that it was in the public interest to test the extent of the powers the minister drew from the Disaster Management Act, in terms of which the ban was imposed.
The imposition of the unprecedented ban in March had raised novel issues in law, it argued.
Dlamini Zuma refused to give an undertaking, sought by Fita, that the ban would not be reintroduced at any future point during the state of disaster, saying she could not agree to exercise her discretion on the matter in any particular way. However, should the ban be reinstated if the country returned to tougher lockdown restrictions from the current alert level 2, the decision would be taken in accordance with the law.
The agreement will see the state and Fita each pay their own legal costs in the North Gauteng High Court case. The court had awarded costs against Fita when it dismissed its legal challenge to rationality of the ban in June, despite the state not seeking a cost order. |