As most of my readers will know, the Road Accident Fund has called a meeting and the topic is the finances of the Road Accident Fund and payment of capital and costs.  One just cannot imagine, with the amount of money that we are seen squandered at the moment by the Road Accident Fund on Sheriff’s fees and failure to settle small matters without incurring massive costs, that there can possibly be any good news.  The question is really how bad the news is going to be, what compromises are going to be expected of attorneys and what the Road Accident Fund is going to offer in return.  I don’t want the jump the gun by putting too many of my ideas in this blog, which tends to be quite well read, but I certainly think that the Road Accident Fund has to step back from their approach of blaming attorneys for everything, and take a long and serious look at themselves.  There are just way too many cases that are settled for under R1 000,00 where their claims handlers are just not capable of making a settlement offer and getting rid of the matter and the legal costs.  We hear of attorneys who do hundreds, if not thousands of suppliers’ claims for R1 000,00 or less who end up being forced to take the matter to court and the Road Accident Fund can be paying their own attorneys R10 000,00 or more in costs and the plaintiff attorneys anywhere between R5 000,00 to R8 000,00 in party and party costs and all of this to settle a claim that they could have gotten rid of by making an offer for R500,00 and tendering R1 200,00 or R1 600,00 in costs.  The proper use of tenders – and by that I mean the realistic offers that put plaintiffs under pressure and not farcical figures thumb sucked by claims handlers who have given no consideration to the matter, could also have dramatic cost savings for the Road Accident Fund.  I think the Road Accident Fund also needs to learn to be more honest with attorneys.  It has been patently obvious for the last 8 or 12 weeks that there have been financial problems at the Road Accident Fund but have we been told that?  No, we have been fed a bunch of stories about the software not working, the finance department’s staff still being on leave, the systems being down and all sorts of other stories while we are continually being leaked allegations that all settlements have stopped (thus forcing matters to court and increasing the legal costs) in an effort to reduce what the Road Accident Fund is paying out.