RAF cases taken to task

INFLATED PAYOUTS: COURT CALLS FOR ‘INCOMPETENT’ BODY TO BE LIQUIDATED

Judgment slams attorneys, medical and financial experts used to quantify claims.

AJohannesburg High Court judge has blown the whistle on what she says are dubious goings on between the Road Accident Fund (RAF) and some personal injury attorneys.

Judge Denise Fisher had on her roll two RAF matters but was told they had been settled and she need not apply her mind to them.

But she smelt a rat when she saw that both claims had seemingly been grossly inflated during settlement negotiations and she refused to remove the matters from her roll.

After conducting her own inquiries, she has now written a 37-page judgment, damning of attorneys, some of the medical and financial experts used to quantify the claims and the RAF officials.

Her conclusion states: “It is my view that the fund should be liquidated or placed under administration as a matter of urgency. This is the only way that this haemorrhage of billions of rands of public funds can be stemmed and proper and valid settlement of plaintiffs’ claims undertaken in the public interest.”

She has asked that the judgment be brought to the attention of the minister of transport, the head of the Road Accident Fund and the National Director of Public Prosecutions.

She has also referred the conduct of experts to their professional bodies and the conduct of De Broglio attorneys, which handled

both matters, to the Legal Practice Council.

The two matters on her roll were that of Marilyn Doris Taylor and Hlengani Victor Mathonsi.

Fisher said they represented a cautionary tale for the RAF and those who rely on it as both the attorneys and the RAF had “sought to avoid the court’s oversight of the settlement agreements”.

“These are not isolated incidents … these cases expose the defiant attempts by legal representatives to avoid judicial scrutiny of settlements entered into under circumstances which are suggestive of dishonesty and gross incompetence.”

She said that since May, the

RAF had been attempting to settle cases rather than run trials to save costs. They were also not using external legal representation and, with no judicial oversight, this had rendered the RAF system, already on the verge of collapse, even more vulnerable to malfeasance and incompetence.

The Taylor case was a claim by an office administrator who, in the main, made tea and coffee. She earned R5 500 a month. Her injuries as a result of the accident were “contrived”; there was no evidence that she had lost her job, and yet a settlement offer of more than R3 million was made.

It was only after the judge queried this that it was reduced to

R1.3 million, the judge said.

In the Mathonsi case, the judge was told the matter had been settled for more than R1.7 million. Again, she said, there were last-minute amendments to the claims.

Fisher said Mathonsi had not lost his employment because of his injury, a fractured clavicle, and yet the RAF had settled the claim for future loss of earnings in excess of R1.3 million.

The modus operandi, she said, was that modest claims were being made and then inflated in the actuarial calculation where the income was exaggerated. The actuarial report was being used as a basis for an amendment of the claim without oversight. –