RAF appeals personal costs order, blames previous directors, graft

The Road Accident Fund (RAF) has applied for leave to appeal the Mpumalanga High Court ruling ordering the CEO and its board members to personally pay legal costs, blaming the previous RAF management for the chaos at the entity.

The RAF top bosses were slapped with a personal costs order last week for failing to do their job in two of the many cases before the high court.

Scathing judgement

Mpumalanga High Court Judge President Francis Legodi’s no-holds-barred judgement slated the RAF for failing to comply with court directives, and the removal of its panel of lawyers in 2020 without a contingency plan.

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The court questioned the entity’s ability to run its affairs as its cases clogged up the court roll, leading to long-winded and costly litigations for claimants.

CEO, board not aware of cases

In the appeal application, the RAF argues that Legodi made a mistake in finding that its board and Letsoalo failed in doing their job because they were not aware of litigation by two of the claimants whose cases were morphed together by the court to try speed up processes.

“Neither the second nor the third applicant [Letsoalo and the board] were already appointed in their respective positions at the time when the litigation commenced.

“The honourable court erred by applying the principles of vicarious liability in order to justify the judgement and order against second and third applicants,” read the appeal papers.

‘No trust, confidence in lawyers’ panel’

Regarding the removal of the team of attorneys, the applicants said they were never going to allow attorneys whose term had expired and “acted contrary to the interests of RAF” to continue with their services.

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The entity said the lawyers’ mandate ended in May 2020 after which they were expected to hand over the files. There was no trust between the two parties, they said.

“The situation had raised serious questions as to whether a relationship of attorney and client could meaningfully come into existence again under such a toxic environment caused by fraud, maladministration and corruption.

“The risk of irreparable harm in being compelled to contract with a panel of attorneys for legal services where no relationship of trust or respect existed, must be significant.”

The current board was appointed in 2019.

Letsoalo’s appointment followed in 2020 after he left the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa).

Their lawyers argue that they cannot be held liable for the chaos and fraud and corruption under the previous RAF management.

Furthermore, no other board or CEO could turn around the transport entity, leaving Letsoalo and team with no choice but to take urgent drastic matters to prevent the entity from total collapse, they argued in the papers.

RAF is an entity of the  Department of Transport.

NOW READ: RAF chair says it’s making ‘great strides’ in turning around the entity