Pretoria - A Mpumalanga judge has put his foot down in two cases against the Road Accident Fund (RAF) in which both parties claimed millions.
The claimants provided the court with hardly any evidence to prove that the accidents occurred. They could also not show that the injuries they claimed to have suffered existed.
In both cases, Judge BA Mashile raised his eyebrows when the lawyers of the claimants did not bother to call witnesses in support of their cases. Yet, they expected the court to grant millions in favour of their clients, based on flimsy evidence.
Judge Mashile concluded in both cases that the public purse had to be protected and he granted absolution from the instance in both matters. The judge said that in light of the many fraudulent claims often served before the courts, he could not make a finding either way.
In the first case, Christina Tshole claimed R2.5 million from the RAF, saying injuries she had suffered in a car crash resulted in her leg being amputated.
She was the only witness who testified about the accident. She called no other witnesses to support her version.
She said was a passenger in a car when she suddenly heard her fellow passengers screaming and saying a vehicle was driving towards them. She did not see the vehicle. She fell unconscious, which she thinks must have been after impact.
She has no idea how the collision happened.
Neither the drivers of the respective vehicles nor the passengers were called to give evidence. The accident report and sketch plan were not proved as the officer who drew them up was not called.
Judge Mashile said he could not decide, based on the evidence, whether the accident did occur and whether the driver of the insured vehicle was negligent.
He remarked that there was an obligation on the plaintiff’s legal team to prove their case sufficiently before they could expect the RAF to pay.
The judge said the only evidence he had was that of the plaintiff, and she had no idea what had happened.
“On the evidence of the plaintiff alone, the collision has not been proved.”
The judge added that given the fact that she was claiming R2.5m, it was “shocking”, that her legal representatives did not anticipate the problems.
A R3m damages claim, instituted by Lucy Mokone, followed the same route. She was also the only witness to the accident. She testified that the driver of the car in which she was a passenger drove into the lane of oncoming traffic and collided with another car.
She said she had suffered various injuries and was taken to hospital.
The judge said; “I cannot have regard to the injuries mentioned by the experts in their reports as being somehow connected to the collision, because the collision itself has not been established.
“So, even though the experts testified about injuries having been sustained, there remains no causal link to the collision,” He added that the injuries have not been proved – apart from medical reports, none of the experts were called to testify.
In this case too, the judge questioned why the police were not called to testify about the accident, as well as the medical experts.
No effort was made to secure the evidence of the driver of the vehicle in which she was a passenger and neither was an attempt made to explain why the witnesses were not called, he added.
The judge said the court could not simply accept uncorroborated allegations of a motor vehicle collision, especially in circumstances where it was public knowledge that the RAF was fraught with multiple fraudulent claims that cost taxpayers millions of rand.
Pretoria News