The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has lost, with punitive costs, a High Court bid to stop the payout of R72m of damages in four medical negligence matters which the SIU claimed were ‘maladministered’ by Eastern Cape Health and its lawyers.
The Daily Dispatch reports that Acting Eastern Cape High Court (Bhisho) Judge Siphokazi Jikela – in dismissing the SIU’s application – expressed her displeasure with the SIU by awarding punitive costs against it. As part of a wider investigation of the handling of medical negligence cases by provincial offices of the State Attorney, the SIU sought to stop four writs of execution amounting to some R72m against the Health Department pending an application it says it intends to bring to rescind the four judgments concerned.
The respondents to the SIU’s court action were four mothers whose children suffer cerebral palsy as a direct result of serious negligence of the public hospitals where they gave birth. And while the SIU was seeking to interdict what they believed, on the basis of ‘preliminary investigations’ were suspect payouts, the lawyers for the four women argued that the children were not receiving the medical and other assistance they desperately needed.
Jikela described as ‘unfair and unjustified ‘ that the SIU had sought to deprive the four caregivers of the cerebral palsy children of the benefit of court orders without the judgments ever having been appealed, reports the Daily Dispatch. ‘By law such judgments stand until reviewed or set aside by an appropriate court order and the plaintiffs were entitled to execute on them.’ Jikela said in all four cases the women had been waiting to benefit from the judgments in their favour ‘for some time’.
‘Why should they be prejudiced? A judgment creditor who obtained judgment is entitled to execute against a litigant to obtain satisfaction of the judgment debt.’
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