Attorney's claim against CCMA commissioner dismissed

A Durban attorney has lost his bid to sue a CCMA commissioner for defamation and overturn a costs order she granted against him because he ought to have known ‘the vast difference between acting in the best interests of one’s client and lying to serve those interests’. While the attorney, Mondli Nhlangulela, claimed that commissioner Phumla Nondala had made ‘baseless and malicious comments about him’, KZN High Court (Durban) Judge Mokgere Masipa, in her recent judgment in his R20m defamation claim, said the commissioner was entitled to express her displeasure. According to a report in The Mercury, the judge also took issue with the fact that the attorney had not sought to review the commissioner’s award (finding that his client was guilty of misconduct and should be dismissed) but had only sought to challenge what he said were the ‘defamatory comments’ made against him and the costs order. Handing down her ruling at the CCMA hear, Nondala accused Nhlangulela of deliberately delaying the matter and persisting with a ‘patently false version, too porous to be believable as probable’. The commissioner said he was an official of the court who took an oath that he would serve South African society with honesty and integrity. ‘Instead, he has written the script, through his deplorable and highly unprofessional conduct during the hearing, for my decision to award a cost order against him and/or his legal practice,’ she said. Nhlangulela said these utterances were ‘untrue and malicious’ and an unwarranted personal attack. ‘There was nothing to show that I acted unprofessionally or disrespectfully,’ he said. The judge ruled: ‘It cannot be said that the commissioner directly or indirectly intended to injure his reputation.’ She ordered that he pay the costs of the application.

Full report in The Mercury (subscription needed)