Leila Samodien
Justice Writer
ALMOST eight years after a train crash near Faure in which 19 farmworkers were killed, two survivors have won a test case in their bid for damages.
Their victory comes on appeal after the case was dismissed by the Western Cape High Court in July last year.
Primilda Jacobs and Caroline Hendricks, whose cases were consolidated, then took the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), which has now found in their favour on the merits.
In a judgment that described the incident as “the worst of its kind in this country”, Judge Stevan Majiedt found that the respondents – cited as Metrorail and the SA Rail Commuter Corporation – had failed to implement reasonable measures to prevent harm.
He set aside the high court’s order and replaced it with an order that found them liable for such damages as Jacobs and Hendricks may prove. The amount in damages is to be determined at a later stage.
The crash took place about 7am on November 13, 2006, as a truck was carrying 29 seasonal farm labourers who were on their way to work on a grape farm.
That day had been the first on the job for truck driver Gert Zeelie. He had never before driven that truck or traversed that particular route.
The truck stalled on the railway tracks at the Croydon level crossing and was hit by an oncoming train.
Nineteen people, including Zeelie, were killed and 12 others injured.
According to the SCA judgment much of the argument in the matter centred on whether the speed restriction – 90km/h – was appropriate for that part of the line.
Judge Majiedt said the harm of the train colliding with a vehicle at the “uncontrolled, minimally protected” level crossing was reasonably foreseeable. “The respondents failed to take adequate reasonable steps to prevent the materialisation of the harm, namely by reducing the speed restriction to 40km/h on that part of the railway line…,” the judgment read.
The matter of Jacobs and Hendricks is considered to be a test case for a number of other pending damages claims arising from the incident.
Jacobs’s attorney, Ighsaan Sadien, said the judgment could now be used in the claims of those who had instituted proceedings.
Attorney Tzvi Brivik, for Hendricks, said the other claimants were, broadly speaking, divided into two groups – those who had suffered personal injury as a result of the incident and those who were claiming loss of support after losing a breadwinner.