A team of lawyers, acting pro bono, have secured a court order forcing the Legal Practice Council (LPC) to help the victims of a suspended attorney, accused of stealing negligence claims worth about R350m that were meant for children born with cerebral palsy.
It is alleged that although Zuko Nonxuba stole millions, the LPC took years to act while the plundering continued and the children suffered.
The court order has given the LPC strict timelines to complete its investigations into the theft of the trust funds, and to pay out any proven claims, writes Tania Broughton in GroundUp.
Among the victims are dozens of children with cerebral palsy whose parents and guardians, through Nonxuba’s firm, sued the Department of Health for medical negligence. Although the department paid millions of rands into the firm’s trust account, Nonxuba pilfered the money.
He has now been suspended from practice.
Attorneys from Andraos and Hatchett Inc, assisted by Advocates Nazeer Cassim SC and Mohammed Desai, launched an urgent application in the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) against the LPC and the Legal Practitioners Fidelity Fund, seeking to support the victims and ensure they get what is legally theirs.
The team is acting for two guardians of two children, but there are more than 30 claimants.
Sluggish response
Between 2013 and 2014, despite a number of complaints, the LPC took no action against Nonxuba.
It was only on 13 July 2019, after the MEC for Health in the Western Cape made an application against the LPC to investigate him, that it was galvanised into action, said the lawyers.
Most of the matters arose after 2015 and had the LPC, or the Law Society (as it was then), acted with some urgency, these children might have been saved from the misconduct of Nonxuba, they added.
In 2022, after court proceedings, the LPC finally appointed a curator to handle the Nonxuba Inc trust account.
That order provided that the LPC trace the other victims and constitute a body of creditors, it being accepted about R100m was still in the account.
“To date the LPC is unable to demonstrate any completeness or efficacy of this task,” the legal team said.
In August 2013, the LPC had directed the children’s guardians and parents to approach the Fidelity Fund, yet while claims were submitted, they were not assessed, and the Fidelity Fund had not made any interim payments, evidence of its failure consider the constitutionally entrenched rights of children.
“All applicants stem from rural areas with little or no access to courts and the true applicants are children, who are incapable of representing themselves,” the lawyers said.
The LPC had argued, in initially opposing the application, that it was already, in consultation with investigators from the Special Investigations Unit, SAPS, Hawks and others, compiling a full and final list of trust creditors, but that this was a complicated task.
The legal team said ultimately, the LPC had abdicated its responsibility – to save its own resources.
The agreement, which was “noted” by the court, sets out an implementation plan with timelines that include advertising on local radio and TV stations to invite potential trust creditors to contact the LPC offices to provide documents proving their claims.
It also directs the immediate tracing of other possible victims with assistance of the SIU.
If there is not enough money to pay the full amounts of verified claims, the Fidelity Fund is to distribute the R100m on a pro rata basis and consider covering the shortfall.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Lawyer who blew disabled children’s millions ‘should be struck off’
Lawyer linked to medico-legal fraud faces being struck off
Attorney barred after making millions from dubious medical negligence claims
Suspended medico-legal lawyer’s trust account seized