January 2026 | General Interest
“My New Year’s resolution is to stop procrastinating. I’ll start tomorrow.” (Anonymous)
Most New Year’s resolutions are vague, unwritten, and destined to be forgotten in the first week of January’s hustle and bustle.
But please don’t neglect this Top Ten list of legal issues that we’ve put together for you. Focus on those that are important to you, taking a few minutes to write down exactly what action you’ll take under each heading. Then set and diarise realistic deadlines to address each item:
| Top 10 Legal Issues for 2026 |
| 1 |
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Update (or draft?!) your will. Check your executor/s, guardian/s, heirs and beneficiaries. Have there been any life events (marriages, divorces, deaths, births, new relationships, new business ventures, new tax changes, new assets or liabilities or anything else) that call for a change in your will? Should you consider making a foreign will as well as your local one? Update (or consider making) a Living Will/Advance Medical Directive. |
| 2 |
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Revisit your estate planning. Are you still on track with your wealth building, your retirement planning, your corporate, trust and tax planning? Have you prepared and updated a file containing your will and all the other information and paperwork that your executors and loved ones will need when the time comes? |
| 3 |
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Check your property affairs are in order. Make sure that your title deed is safely filed away together with your original purchase documents and receipts, as well as proof of subsequent capital improvements – you’ll need all of these to calculate your CGT base cost when you come to sell. If you’re a landlord or tenant, are all leases current, in order and easily accessible? If you co-own property, do you have an agreement in place laying out what each joint owner’s rights and duties are, who pays what costs and when, and so on? Does it need updating? |
| 4 |
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If you cohabit with your life partner, do you have a full cohabitation agreement in place? Does it need amending or updating? Does it mesh with both of your wills? |
| 5 |
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Review all your contracts: personal, employment, suppliers, clients etc. Have there been any changes in the law or in your circumstances that call for renegotiation or amendment? Are all these contracts compliant with any new legal developments? |
| 6 |
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Review all corporate and tax compliance matters. Are you up to date with CIPC, tax and other returns? Do you need to update your POPIA and PAIA documentation? All the red tape and deadlines out there are as annoying as they are time consuming, but compliance is vital. |
| 7 |
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Make sure you have a disaster/continuity plan in place. This should address risks like cyberattacks, data loss, business disruptors (AI springs to mind), load-shedding, natural disasters, another pandemic – the list is endless. |
| 8 |
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Business and personal insurance. Are you sufficiently covered? Are any changes needed? It’s amazing how easy it is to forget to remove that premium-guzzling e-bike you sold on Marketplace, or to add your expensive new cell phone. Now’s your chance to correct that. |
| 9 |
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Perform a full cybersecurity audit and health check. Check password protection, multi-factor authentication and similar safeguards, email and electronic communication security, defence against malware, phishing, ransomware and the like, staff and family awareness training etc. If you have crypto holdings, double check that they are secure. |
| 10 |
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Anything else? Brainstorm with your family, and with us, everything else that could be important to you. |
Step into 2026 secure in the knowledge that all the legal aspects of your life are in order. And remember that we’re always here to help when you need us!
Disclaimer: The information provided herein should not be used or relied on as professional advice. No liability can be accepted for any errors or omissions nor for any loss or damage arising from reliance upon any information herein. Always contact us for specific and detailed advice.
© LawDotNews
November 2025 | General Interest, Road Traffic
“South African drivers, beware! Scammers are issuing fake traffic fines to catch you off guard! Always use AARTO approved collecting agents for your payments.” (Road Traffic Infringement Agency)
The national rollout of AARTO has again been postponed, this time to July 2026. Speculation is that we now won’t see the demerit system implemented before the middle of 2027, but both dates remain provisional until gazetted.
None of this should stop us from sharing with our families, friends, colleagues and staff this warning: Scammers don’t care about the delayed rollout date, they’re too busy stealing from harried motorists.
How to avoid being scammed
Beware of these common scams:
- Phishing emails, SMSs and WhatsApp messages. They can look exactly like official communications from genuine organisations – your local traffic department perhaps, or the National Traffic Information System (Natis).
- Links to fake payment portals and official websites, cloned to look like the real thing.
- Phone calls from helpful “officials”, warning you of “overdue” fines and kindly offering to guide you through a quick and easy payment process to avoid all the horrendous consequences of failing to pay.
These “ghost fine” frauds all take advantage of the confusion swirling around everything AARTO, and use a blend of threats (“If you don’t pay you face arrest and suspension of your driver’s licence”), incentives (“Pay within 5 days to get a 50% discount) and deception to con you into rushing payment.
Use only official, legitimate payment channels. If you aren’t sure, check with your local municipality (or ask us to check for you).
Disclaimer: The information provided herein should not be used or relied on as professional advice. No liability can be accepted for any errors or omissions nor for any loss or damage arising from reliance upon any information herein. Always contact us for specific and detailed advice.
© LawDotNews
October 2025 | Employment and Labour Law, General Interest, Road Traffic
“Forewarned is forearmed.” (Wise old proverb)
Government keeps assuring us that the long-delayed AARTO (Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences) system will finally begin its full national rollout on 1 December 2025.
Is this another false start or the real thing this time?
There have been so many false starts to AARTO over the last fifteen years that many of us will no doubt take the attitude “I’ll believe it when I see it” … Particularly with all the speculation that the implementation could be delayed, varied or even blocked again by legal and other challenges.
But let’s not be caught unawares here – this time, the first phase really could be shooting out of the starting blocks on time, so it seems a good idea to start prepping for the changes. Particularly now that the annual holiday season, with its surge in year-end travel, speed trapping and roadblocks, is almost upon us.
In a nutshell, the way traffic fines work is about to change for millions of drivers, including private motorists, fleet operators, delivery drivers, taxi operators, owners etc.
Here’s what you need to know on a practical level.
Firstly, driver demerits are still nine months away
Sensational, click bait headlines and fake news reports notwithstanding, the “driver demerit points” system, with its licence suspensions and cancellations for repeat offenders, is only scheduled to kick in on 1 September 2026.
So what will actually change on 1 December?
If your vehicle is registered in, or if you drive in, any of the 69 major municipalities and metros countrywide scheduled for commencement on 1 December 2025, you’ll be subject to these new rules from day one, with the other 144 areas set to commence on 1 April 2026:
- Fines will become administrative, not criminal: Traffic infringements such as speeding, traffic light, licence, parking offences and so on will no longer be handled in criminal courts. Instead, the RTIA (Road Traffic Infringement Agency) will run everything as an administrative process.
- Electronic notices: Infringement notices, courtesy letters and enforcement orders can now be sent by email or SMS (even by fax if you still list a fax number) as well as by post or personal service. Not receiving notices won’t be a defence – legal service will be deemed to have been made whether you receive/open them or not. The onus is on you to make sure you get them by updating all your contact details with your licensing authority now – and by configuring your spam and junk filters to let them through.
- Discounts and deadlines: A 50% discount will be your reward for paying within 32 days of receiving an Infringement Notice. Miss that window and you lose the discount. You may then get a Courtesy Letter allowing you another 32 days to pay the full fine plus a fee. If you still don’t pay, an Enforcement Order is issued.
- Enforcement orders will block licence and permit renewals: Unpaid fines that reach the “enforcement order” stage are recorded on the National Contraventions Register. If your name appears on the register, you are automatically blocked from registering a vehicle and from renewing your vehicle licence disc or driver’s licence/professional driving permit.
- If you aren’t the driver: You must nominate the actual driver within 32 days to prevent the fine being attached to you. Keep a copy of all drivers’ driving licences so you have a record of the infringer’s full names and I.D. number.
- Businesses in particular should be able to identify the drivers of their vehicles at all times so that fines can be allocated correctly. Also, review all your staff training processes, vehicle policies and disciplinary procedures accordingly.
- Scammers are reportedly already issuing fake notices so be sure to pay on authorised payment portals only.
- Know your rights but act quickly: You can still make representations or appeal against fines you disagree with, but strict deadlines apply.
Johannesburg and Tshwane motorists
Note that although Johannesburg and Tshwane motorists have already lived with AARTO’s pilot fine system for years, from 1 December 2025 they will move onto the amended national AARTO framework and can expect stricter electronic service, updated fine tariffs, stronger enforcement order blocks on licence renewals, and new proxy nomination duties.
Bottom line: if you need our help with anything, please get in touch immediately!
Disclaimer: The information provided herein should not be used or relied on as professional advice. No liability can be accepted for any errors or omissions nor for any loss or damage arising from reliance upon any information herein. Always contact us for specific and detailed advice.
© LawDotNews
September 2025 | Business, Criminal Law / Crime, General Interest, Property
“If you suspect deceit, hit delete!” (Online cybersecurity slogan)
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a good time to note that as cybercrime continues to grow, more and more businesses and individuals are falling victim to the dreaded “BEC” or “Business Email Compromise” fraud.
The million-dollar question: Who takes the hit?
Typically in a BEC fraud, email or other electronic communications between a creditor and debtor (often a seller and buyer, or service provider and client) are hacked by criminals, who con the debtor into paying what they owe into the fraudster’s bank account. By the time the parties realise they’ve been had, the criminals are long gone, and all that remains is the million-dollar (sometimes quite literally!) question: “Which one of us takes the hit?”
Until now we have been faced with conflicting High Court decisions on this point, but now the SCA (Supreme Court of Appeal) has settled it: The risk is the debtor’s.
A car dealership must pay twice over
It was a classic case of BEC: A dealership bought two Hyundai Nissan NP200 vehicles from another dealership for R145,000 each. The seller issued invoices showing its banking details. The buyer paid by EFT and sent proof of payment to the seller, which happily (without checking that the funds had actually landed in its account) delivered the vehicles to the buyer.
As always with these cases, one can imagine the sinking feeling that greeted the parties’ realisation that the seller’s emails and the attached invoices had been intercepted, and the banking details subtly altered. As a result, the buyer had paid the full R290,000 to the criminals’ bank account.
Long story short, a real seesaw of a legal battle ensued. The buyer said, “I’ve already paid you”. The seller retorted, “No you haven’t, you paid the criminals,” and sued the buyer for the R290k. The seller won in the Regional Court, lost on appeal to the High Court, but then turned the tables again and celebrated victory in a further appeal to the SCA.
Verify, verify, verify
The SCA’s findings amount to this:
- The onus is always on you as buyer to prove, on a balance of probabilities (i.e. more likely than not), that you have paid the seller.
- When you pay by EFT, you must show that the seller actually got the money. In other words, that you paid into the correct bank account.
- Creditors (recipients) have no legal duty to protect debtors (payers) from the possibility of their accounts being hacked where the debtor could have taken steps to protect itself but failed to do so.
- The obligation therefore is on you as debtor to ensure that the bank account details in the invoice are in fact correct and verified because “it is the debtor’s duty to seek out his creditor”. Fail to follow basic verification steps, and your payment to the wrong account does not remove your liability to pay the debt — you still have to pay your creditor.
Bottom line, the buyer in this case should have verified the banking details given in the emailed invoices before paying. It didn’t, so it couldn’t prove that it had paid into an account authorised by the seller.
It must pay the seller the R290k, with interest and doubtless substantial legal costs.
Don’t make the same mistake
These scams grow more sophisticated by the day, fuelled now by AI-perfected deep fakes, cloned websites and social engineering. Treat all emails, all electronic messages, and all electronic invoices with great suspicion — even if they appear to come from businesses you have known and trusted for decades. Verify bank account details (preferably by speaking to the creditor directly on a number you know to be correct) before paying a cent.
Property sales are particularly vulnerable
Be especially vigilant when buying or selling property because these high-value sales are a particular focus for cybercriminals worldwide. There are rich pickings in the offing, and the opportunities for baddies to intercept and falsify emails is multiplied by the range of trusted role players involved — typically several sets of attorneys, estate agents, and banks as well as the buyers and sellers themselves.
A final note on online security
Let’s end off with a note to everyone: Keep reminding your whole team (not just your accounts department) that securing your computer and email systems against bad-actor compromise is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s essential. This whole unhappy saga could all have been avoided if everyone involved had followed basic security protocols. Prevention is always better than cure.
Give us a call if you need any help.
Disclaimer: The information provided herein should not be used or relied on as professional advice. No liability can be accepted for any errors or omissions nor for any loss or damage arising from reliance upon any information herein. Always contact us for specific and detailed advice.
© LawDotNews
June 2025 | Criminal Law / Crime, General Interest, Property
“I charge you by the law.” (William Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice)
Victims of crime are entitled to see the perpetrators brought to justice. Feeling that the justice system has failed you can cause significant psychological harm and feelings of victimisation.
So, what happens if you believe that you are the victim of a crime, which you duly report to the police – only to be told that the NPA (National Prosecuting Authority) has declined to prosecute?
You could of course console yourself with the thought that “well, at least I tried” and walk away unfazed. But if you feel strongly enough about it, you are not without legal remedy – in appropriate cases you could be advised to go the private prosecution route.
A significant SCA (Supreme Court of Appeal) judgment last year provides an excellent example of just such a case.
Neighbours at war in an upmarket suburb
The scene here is Kloof Road in Cape Town’s Bantry Bay, renowned for its prime location on the Atlantic Seaboard, luxurious houses, and panoramic sea views.
The protagonists are next-door neighbours, whose acrimonious relationship and long history of disputes was founded in the one owner’s renovations, and the other’s strenuous objections to them. Who will eventually win that particular battle remains for another court to determine, but in the course of these disputes the one owner, a senior attorney, accessed his neighbour’s confidential credit records using a colleague’s login details.
This tactic backfired when the neighbour laid criminal charges against her adversary, saying that he had unlawfully and covertly accessed her personal and private information without the required authority or consent. She later added charges of fraud and defeating or obstructing the administration of justice, alleging that during the consequent investigation he had variously and falsely claimed firstly to have not accessed her data, then to have had her consent, then to have acted as her attorney, and lastly to have accessed her records inadvertently.
The media’s reporting of this high-profile spat created what the Court later described as a “public spectacle”, and the trial courts will have to wade through a web of hotly-contested and conflicting evidence in their search for the truth.
But for now, our interest lies in the fact that the NPA declined to prosecute on any of these charges. Undeterred, the neighbour initiated a private prosecution, a move hotly contested by her opponent all the way up to the SCA.
What must you prove to launch a private prosecution?
The SCA, in ultimately allowing the neighbour to proceed, set out our law on the matter.
The starting point is always the NPA issuing a certificate nolle prosequi (a fancy Latin term meaning simply that the State declines to prosecute), for it is that certificate which opens the door to you to have a go at it yourself. As a side note here, legislation specific to the SPCA, SARS and a few other specialised entities allows them to prosecute specified matters without a nolle prosequi certificate – but the rest of us need one.
Once you’ve got your nolle prosequi certificate you must prove that:
- You have an interest in the issue of the trial.
- Your interest is substantial and peculiar to you.
- Your interest arises from some injury individually suffered by you.
- Your injury was suffered as a consequence of the commission of the alleged offence.
In deciding whether or not to grant your application, the court will also consider whether private prosecution would offend public policy. If you are shown to be acting maliciously, vindictively, vexatiously, or without foundation, your application will fail.
Essentially, the Court performs a balancing act between your right to have your dispute “resolved by application of the law and decided in a fair public hearing before a court”, and the accused person’s “right not to be subjected to unfounded and vexatious private prosecution.”
In this case, the Court allowed the private prosecution to continue, commenting that the accused would now have the opportunity to vindicate his innocence at trial.
Think before you leap
Before you charge blithely down this route, bear in mind that private prosecution carries, in the Court’s words, “enormous financial risk”. So be very confident of your prospects of success and bear in mind that:
- Even if you win it’s a costly exercise, because you are now paying your own legal team and a private prosecutor out of your own pocket rather than relying on state officials to do the job for you.
- If you lose and the trial court finds your prosecution to be unfounded and vexatious (a real risk after the NPA declined to proceed), you risk punitive costs and compensatory orders. If the accused can prove you acted without reasonable cause and with malice, you could also be liable for damages in a separate civil claim for malicious prosecution.
Considering a private prosecution? We’ll help you weigh up the pros and cons.
Disclaimer: The information provided herein should not be used or relied on as professional advice. No liability can be accepted for any errors or omissions nor for any loss or damage arising from reliance upon any information herein. Always contact us for specific and detailed advice.
© LawDotNews
March 2025 | Business, Criminal Law / Crime, General Interest
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” (Benjamin Franklin’s warning to fire-threatened Philadelphians in 1736)
Cases of Business Email Compromise (BEC) fraud continue to surge, and recent High Court decisions have confirmed that it’s up to you to verify that you are paying into the correct bank account.
How does BEC work and who is at risk?
BEC fraud involves cybercriminals impersonating your trusted contacts (e.g. suppliers and professional advisors) in fraudulent emails that look genuine. The idea is to trick you into making payment into the scammer’s account.
Everyone’s at risk, but BEC is particularly rife in transactions where large amounts of money are in play. Favourite targets are commercial operations and their customers, as well as all role-players in property sales – buyers, sellers, conveyancers and estate agents.
How do these scams work? For a snapshot of a classic BEC sting, have a look at this recent High Court case…
“But I paid you the R890k!”
Two Cape Town companies, who had been trading happily and successfully with each other for seven years, fell out over who should bear a loss of R886,726.25 after scammers stole the customer’s payment for a consignment of valves. Here’s how it went down:
- The customer had always made payments to the supplier’s Standard Bank account in the past. So far, so good.
- But then, enter stage left, our villain: Joe Scammer. Joe intercepts the supplier’s email correspondence and, pretending to be the supplier’s managing director, asks the customer to make all payments to an Absa bank account from now on.
- The customer asks for a bank confirmation letter, which Joe (still in his guise as MD) gladly supplies.
- Reassured, the customer makes payment to the Absa account. The fraud is only discovered when, three days later, the supplier emails asking for payment.
- Joe is of course now long gone with his loot, leaving customer and supplier to fight it out over who must bear the loss.
Blaming the supplier won’t work – you must “seek out” your creditor
The customer, sued by the supplier for the outstanding amount, contended that the blame lay with the supplier, whose own negligence in failing to secure its IT systems against email interception caused the fraud.
That’s a defence often raised by BEC victims, and indeed our courts have stressed in the past the need for suppliers and professionals to ensure that their own computer systems are properly secured at all times. But it cut no ice in this case.
Rather, said the Court, (emphasis supplied), “it is the debtor’s obligation to ‘seek out his creditor’ and … until payment is duly effected, the debtor carries the risk that the payment may be misappropriated or mislaid.”
The real cause of the loss in this case, held the Court, was not any hacking of the supplier’s emails (if there was in fact a hack – the supplier denied it), but the customer’s failure to take the steps that a “prudent debtor” would have taken to ensure that it was paying into the correct account.
Our unfortunate customer must now pay the supplier, plus a raft of legal costs to boot.
Pick up the phone!
Our courts will have no sympathy for you if you fall victim by not protecting yourself. A factor that counted against our customer here was (emphasis supplied): “the fact, known to any persons in business and making use of computer-based methods of communication and payment, that cyber crime is rampant and that care must be taken at all times to limit its impact.”
The good news is that a few simple preventative measures can provide everyone involved with a strong layer of protection:
- Put in place strong policies and procedures to ensure that your IT systems and emails are secured against breach and interception.
- You, and all of your staff, must remain constantly vigilant against the techniques which the scammers use. They are particularly adept at exploiting trust-based and long-standing relationships, for instance with suppliers you have dealt with for years, and professionals like attorneys, accountants and financial advisors etc.
- Most importantly, perhaps, given the current attitude of our courts, is to always verify payment details via contact with your creditor through another communication system. As our courts have pointed out, “a simple telephone call” can be enough to avoid falling victim to fraud.
If you need help reviewing your fraud prevention and payment verification procedures, please feel free to contact us.
Disclaimer: The information provided herein should not be used or relied on as professional advice. No liability can be accepted for any errors or omissions nor for any loss or damage arising from reliance upon any information herein. Always contact us for specific and detailed advice.
© LawDotNews
