The proverbial man in the street is forever complaining to the media that there is never any justice, or that only the wealthy get justice.  Subpoena that man in the street to court, as a witness in a case, and he will howl and protest and make every story under the sun to avoid giving his testimony.  Too many people don’t realise that the justice system depends on all of them and they prefer to listen to the radio, or watch TV (nobody seems to read anymore) and then call in to talk shows and mouth off about the justice system. 

I must say I’ve had my fair share of abusive witnesses who have been subpoenaed to court in various clients’ cases, and who always say, even if they got the subpoena three months before the trial date, that they just cannot be there and in any event, they decide themselves that they are not needed for the trial.  Making the courts work starts with everyone of us and it starts with doing your duty when you are called upon to testify.

 My most recent survey of attorneys, with regard to what they expected the Constitutional Court to find to be in the challenge on the new Road Accident Fund Act, was interesting as always.  95% of attorneys think the Law Society of SA will win the common law aspect of the challenge while only 23% believe that we will win all the other aspects of the challenge.  77% indicated that they did not know, until the hearing, that the general damages aspect of the challenge was not proceeded with before the Constitutional Court.  That will obviously have to be saved for another day, either by the Law Society or an attorney.  62% think that the judgment will take about three months to be delivered, while 33% went for one month and only 3% said in two weeks’ time. 

What was interesting however is that only 5% of attorneys on my newsletter list actually attended the Constitutional Court hearing and of that 5%, 50% feel that we will win the common law challenge and 50% believe that we will not.  In other words, those who did attend the hearing, are not as optimistic as those who did not attend the hearing.