Cape Town - Legal trouble is brewing over the Judicial Service Commission’s overlooking Jeremy Gauntlett, SC, for appointment as a judge.
The commission on Friday officially announced the names of the five candidates it had recommended for appointment to the Western Cape Bench. This came a little over a week after the names of the successful candidates were leaked to the media.
They are attorneys Judith Cloete, Nape Dolamo and Pearl Mantame, and advocates Owen Rogers, SC, and Ashton Schippers, SC.
Gauntlett, considered to be one of the best lawyers in the country, was overlooked, sparking outrage in the legal fraternity.
It also prompted Judge Louis Harms, former deputy judge president of the Supreme Court of Appeal, to write to Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng last week through his lawyers. In the letter, dated October 23, the omission of Gauntlett is described as “irrational and accordingly legally assailable”.
Judge Harms, who nominated Gauntlett, also questioned the preferring of Dolamo over Gauntlett as “irrational and inexplicable”.
The letter urged that Dolamo’s recommendation be referred back to the commission and that the commission provide reasons why it had recommended Dolamo and not Gauntlett.
If the chief justice was not prepared to refer Dolamo’s recommendation back to the commission, the letter said, it was requested that Dolamo not be appointed as a judge “until our client [Judge Harms] has had a reasonable opportunity of instituting an application to review and set aside” the JSC’s recommendation of Dolamo.
In a letter of response two days later, JSC secretariat Sello Chiloane indicated the announcement would go ahead as planned on Friday, which it did.
He also said it would be “inappropriate” for the commission to deal with the issues raised in the letter before the announcement.
Judge Harms’s lawyers then replied to Chiloane’s letter, writing that it was “regretted” that this was the case.
“It had been hoped that the problems which have arisen might first be addressed other than in the public domain, with a view to resolving them and avoiding public controversy,” the letter in reply read.
The JSC has faced setbacks before because of legal action against it.
In a court battle that ended up in the Supreme Court of Appeal, the Cape Bar Council successfully challenged the commission over whether it was properly constituted during a sitting in April last year as well as its decision not to fill two of three vacancies at the Western Cape High Court.
As the litigation pended, interviews for vacancies on the Western Cape Bench were put on ice, with the result that no one was interviewed for more than a year.
Commission spokesman CP Fourie did not comment on the correspondence between Judge Harms’s lawyers and the commission, other than saying that those involved were entitled to reasons as to why the commission had not recommended Gauntlett for the Bench - if they were requested.
Fourie also confirmed the recommendation of Cape Town Judge Basheer Waglay for appointment as judge president of the Labour Court.
Cape Times