Law firm authors its own demise

The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) had dealt another setback to Ronald Bobroff and Partners (RPB) regarding contingency fee agreements (CFAs) with clients who have received Road Accident Fund (RAF) payouts. The law firm was hoist with its own petard when it turned to the law on prescription in a bid to frustrate an unhappy client’s bid to have the agreement scrapped, reports Legalbrief. The case proved costly for RPB – a punitive costs order, among other things, was issued against the firm – when Judge Basheer Vally ruled the CFA to be invalid. The Bobroffs claimed the applicant, Gavin Wong, should have brought his application in 2007 when he indicated his unhappiness with the CFA in a letter of complaint to the Law Society of the Northern Provinces (LSNP) with regard to the law firm’s charge of 30% of the RAF payout plus VAT (he argued it should have been 25% plus VAT). The claim, brought in 2015, the law firm argued, had prescribed in 2010. Wong, though, said he became aware that his CFA might be unlawful only after the Constitutional Court had ruled against the same respondents in February 2014 that a CFA relied on by them was unlawful and of no force and effect. The Bobroffs were the authors of their own demise when Darren Bobroff told the court that until the outcome of the Constitutional Court case, ‘in excess of 74% of LSNP members reported using such agreements’. The judge noted that if ‘in excess of 74%’ of the society’s attorneys were of the view that an agreement such as the CFA was lawful then the applicant, a lay person, could not be faulted for failing to establish it was unlawful.