Three years late: judge finally hands down ruling

A Pretoria high court judge has finally delivered a judgment that had been outstanding since August 2022.

- Marecia Damons

The case, however, never appeared on any of the judiciary’s reserved judgments reports.

The matter between two businessmen was heard in Pretoria on 15 August 2022. Judgment was reserved the same day by Judge Letty Molopa-Sethosa.

Six months later, on 13 February 2023, the plaintiff's attorneys sent a letter to Molopa-Sethosa asking when judgment would be delivered. When they did not receive a response, they sent another letter in October 2024 to then Gauteng judge president Dunstan Mlambo. Despite these efforts, a ruling was not delivered.

The judicial norms and standards state that, except in exceptional circumstances, a judgment should not take longer than three months to deliver. GroundUp and the Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ) use a more lenient six-month benchmark to consider a judgment late. Because the system relies on judges to self-report, there is no automatic mechanism to flag missing or late judgments.