An acting judge in Limpopo was at pains to point out to opposing litigants in a multimillion-rand damages claim against the health authorities that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
These comments were made in yet another interlocutory application in the case where Daniel Sithole is claiming damages from the Health MEC in Limpopo. He was a clinical manager in the employ of the Limpopo Health Department.
He issued summons in 2017 against the department, suing it for damages arising from how he was treated, or mistreated, during his employment.
The main matter, however, has never got off the ground, as both parties have launched numerous technical objections in law against each other’s cases.
One such interlocutory aspect once again landed in court now, but three judges said enough was enough and the main matter must now get off the ground.
Acting Judge MS Monene, who wrote the judgment, said neither party are flawless.
In the opening to his judgment, he said: “Notwithstanding whether we believe it to be true or just a recording of some mythical story, we read in the Christian Bible that on being confronted with a situation of a mob baying for the blood of a woman accused of adultery, Jesus Christ defeated the intentions of the stone-possessing murderous crowd with the call that it be the one without sin who casts the first stone.”
He added that the English have a saying which carries through a message similar to the one attributed to Christ Jesus which calls on people who live in glass houses to refrain from throwing stones. In referring to the fact that both the claimant and the department continued to point out legal flaws in each other’s cases, where both parties were at fault, the judge remarked: “It really poses a question of whether two wrongs make a right or whether Solomonic wisdom will permit a situation where one wrong party benefits out of the faults of an equally wrong opponent.”
In advising that it was time to rather concentrate on the main issue at hand, the judge remarked that the department is facing a claim of at least R12 million.
He said this large amount, if the claimant succeeded in his legal action, will have to “come out of a Third World health department public purse which is already stretched to the limit resulting in the majority of the people dying from curable diseases”.
“If it is to be paid out, it has to be arising from a fair process and not arising from mere technicalities,” he said.
The judge added that at the end of the day the interests of justice are really what justice is interested in. He said payments from the public purse should be made on account of proven claims and preferably not over human error induced technicalities, especially when there are multiple dirty hands.
“In the final analysis it would, in my view, really be helpful to all litigants in pursuit of their angle of justice to at times take a pause and consider that while they may gleefully point out a speck in their opponent’s eye, they may at the same time be unaware of a similar speck or even a bigger log in their own eye.
“The court, in my view, occupies a vantage point from the bench from which to clearly see all eyes and all specks and all logs and all clean eyes to be able to, without a mechanical approach or arbitrariness, dispense justice and equity,” the judge concluded.
Pretoria News