The high court in Johannesburg recently ordered the metro to pay Ber’s legal costs, after a five-year battle that ended in his favour.
According to Berg, and his attourneys, SJ Naude Attourneys, the costs incurred by the metro during the case together with Berg’s legal costs and the R50 000 in damages, all add up to more than R1-m.
Berg says the court war all began in 2008, when Berg demanded a written apology after the then municipal manager, Patrick Flusk, told city officials in a meeting that Berg was corrupt and would be jailed.
Because of Flusk and the municipality’s unwillingness to apologise, the metro lost the defamation case and was ordered to pay R50 000 in damages after going to court.
The metro appealed the judgment but were not successful and were also ordered to pay Berg’s legal costs.
Berg sent out a statement after the municipality lost its appeal, saying that he felt the metro did not value the money of the rate payer if a letter of apology could result in the spending of over R1-m of ratepayers’ money.
“I will also forward all the detail of wasteful expenditure to the Auditor-General on this case to audit and to report back to council. I will also request that the officials who briefed the mayor and CM on this case when we wanted to settled to be held responsible for all the costs,” states Berg.
Metro spokesperson, Sam Modiba, says the metro’s legal team is currently looking at the judgment so as to allow the metro’s way forward on this matter.
