Pretoria - A pair of Mont Blanc sunglasses and a 2019 Range Rover with personalised number plates became the subjects of a fierce legal battle in the Western Cape High Court.
The applicant, a woman, said her estranged husband and her father-in-law had deprived her of the possessions.
The car was subsequently returned to the woman. She is identified as only PM in the judgment as divorce proceedings are pending between her and her husband, RM.
Her husband and her father-in-law, identified as GMM, denied they had her designer sunglasses.
The dispute started when the husband and her father-in-law took her Range Rover outside a mall where she was shopping one day. PM said she had a pair of sunglasses and cash, among other items, in the car.
The applicant brought an urgent application against the two respondents for the return of the car and the other movable assets in the vehicle.
PM told the court her marriage had broken down irretrievably and divorce proceedings were pending.
She said that in August 2019, when she and her husband were together, her father-in-law had bought her a Range Rover.
At the time, the couple lived in KwaZulu-Natal and the woman used her name to personalise the number plates.
When she separated from her husband, her father-in-law demanded the car back. She refused and he threatened to sue her.
PM relocated to Cape Town last year and took the car with her. She had a set of keys and her husband had the spare key.
In April last year, she parked the vehicle at Tyger Valley Mall in Durbanville. Later, she received a text message from her husband who told her that his father had fetched the car and that it was no longer in the parking bay.
When she returned from shopping, she noticed the car was gone, with everything inside it, including her sunglasses, which she said were worth at least R15 000.
Her father-in-law couriered some of the belongings back to her but denied the sunglasses and money were in the car when he took it.
After she had instituted urgent court proceedings against her husband and father-in-law last year, the car was returned to her.
The issue of the sunglasses and the money was postponed until now as it had remained in dispute. They say the items were not in the car when it was taken from the shopping mall.
It was argued on behalf of the applicant that the husband said he had couriered the sunglasses to her, thus, according to the woman, that was the same as admitting that he had them. She, however, never received the package, she said. This was denied by the husband and his father.
Judge James Lekhuleni said the applicant’s suggestion that they had conceded that they were in possession of the items in question was misplaced and too opportunistic.
The judge pointed out that the parties had reached an agreement last year that the items found in the car would be returned.
He questioned why the respondents would drag out the proceedings to later fight the issue of the sunglasses, if they really did have them.
The judge said the fact that they had maintained that they knew nothing about the sunglasses was not far-fetched. If they had the glasses, they would have returned them earlier, with the other things found in the car, rather than facing a dragged-out litigation.
“I am of the view that their denial is not implausible,” the judge said in turning down her application.
Pretoria News