Has it ever happened to you that you found yourself in a situation where you required the assistance of an Attorney to enforce your rights, but the attorney’s fees were too expensive to justify taking any action?
As an attorney, I do understand that fees to litigate can get awfully expensive very quickly.
The Small Claim Court (“SCC”) was established as a forum, to circumvent the frustration, as alluded to above, of prospective litigants, to assist litigants in legal issues where the amount of a claimant’s claim, is under the threshold amount.
The SCC has since April 2019, had jurisdiction to preside over matters of a monetary value of up to R20 000. While it might be too expensive to instruct an attorney to assist litigants with a full-blown litigation trial for a claim of R20 000 or less, the SCC now provides litigants with the option to approach it to make a determination. While the SCC does provide you with an alternative, it does however, have limited powers, in that, for example, the SCC is not able to assist juristic persona, such as Companies and/or Trusts and therefor may only hear matters where the Plaintiff is a natural person. The SCC is also not able to adjudicate certain matters, such as divorces, evictions and certain labour related matters.
Make sure you know when you are entitled to approach the SCC for assistance, as this might just save you unnecessary legal costs of an attorney.
Please contact us if you have any questions in this regard.
Commenti