A man who fell from a moving train in 2001 has been successful in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in his bid to claim damages against the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa).
This comes after the SCA overturned a Western Cape High Court order in a case involving the prescription period for the appellant’s claim.
The SCA’s ruling centred on whether the three-year limit of prescription started immediately after the incident or extended post-impediment.
Acting as Denzil John Reyners’s curator, the appellant advocate Christo Bischoff argued against Prasa’s prescription plea, asserting the inapplicability of section 12 of the Prescription Act due to the client’s mental defects which resulted from the accident.
Bischoff argued that section 12 was not applicable as the mental defects sustained by his client prevented him from having knowledge of the debtor’s identity and that the injuries sustained rendered him of unsound mind.
Prescription could, therefore, only have started once he was placed under curatorship.
The incident dates back to February 20, 2001, when Reyners fell from a moving train, leading to head injuries and subsequent medical treatment, including surgery.
Despite an initial indication of a full recovery upon discharge in March 2001, Reyners suffered lasting consequences, including temporal lobe epilepsy, memory loss, aggression, personality changes and permanent cognitive impairment.
Judge of Appeal Keoagile Matojane found that Prasa failed to present any evidence to counter the claims of the curator’s expert witnesses regarding Reyners’s disability and his need to be assisted by a curator ad litem from the time of the incident.
“On the conspectus of the evidence as a whole, it is clear that Mr Reyners has been under a disability or impediment since the incident, which prevented the interruption of the running of prescription as contemplated in the act. Even though a curator was appointed approximately 12 years later, it was clear that Mr Reyners needed a curator after the incident.
Prescription began to run from the date of the appointment of the curator ad litem. For all of these reasons, the appeal must succeed.”
Lawyer for Reyners, Jonathan Cohen, welcomed the SCA decision.
“It has been a very long and drawn-out battle to achieve justice for my client, who sustained severe head injuries when he fell out of the open doors of a moving train some 24 years ago. The SCA has correctly recognised his right to claim damages for the harm that he suffered, in that he falls into that special category of persons recognised by the provisions of the Prescription Act that states that the three-year time bar cannot run against a person who has been rendered incapable of managing their affairs, particularly when such incapacity has been caused by the defendant, in this instance, Prasa, who are charged with the responsibility of ensuring the safe carriage of passengers on commuter trains,” said Cohen.
Prasa said their legal team was studying the judgment.
Cape Times