{"id":252090,"date":"2023-03-08T10:43:34","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T08:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/insulting-vulgar-and-disparaging-language-by-a-legal-practitioner-cannot-be-tolerated-in-court-says-sca\/"},"modified":"2023-03-08T10:43:34","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T08:43:34","slug":"insulting-language-by-a-lawyer-cannot-be-tolerated-in-court-say-sca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/insulting-language-by-a-lawyer-cannot-be-tolerated-in-court-say-sca\/","title":{"rendered":"Insulting language by a lawyer cannot be tolerated in court, say SCA"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/Graphics\/lisa_nelson\/scales-of-justice.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/insulting-language-by-a-lawyer-cannot-be-tolerated-in-court-say-sca.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Illustration: Lisa Nelson<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A bad tempered, disrespectful law graduate is not fit and proper to be admitted as an attorney, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) has ruled.<\/li>\n<li>Goane Jack Siamisang Montshiwa had insulted judges and attorneys.<\/li>\n<li>Sending a strong message, the judge noted \u201chis lack of appreciation of the ethos and principles that govern the legal profession and the courts of this country\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A law graduate who has a \u201cpredisposition to bouts of extreme anger and disrespect\u201d is not a fit and proper person to be enrolled as an attorney, the Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/insulting-language-by-a-lawyer-cannot-be-tolerated-in-court-say-sca.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Goane Jack Siamisang Montshiwa, who studied his LLB (law degree) through UNISA, approached the court to appeal the refusal to admit him as a legal practitioner by a specially constituted two-judge full bench of the Mahikeng High Court.<\/p>\n<p>The Mahikeng court judges found that he was not a fit and proper person and had not completed the necessary practical vocational training, among other reasons, for rejecting his application.<\/p>\n<p>Montshiwa\u2019s application for leave to appeal was unsuccessful and so he petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).<\/p>\n<p>The SCA said the refusal to grant Montshiwa leave to appeal in the high court was \u201ca nullity\u201d because it had only been heard by one judge.<\/p>\n<p>However, SCA Acting Deputy President Nambitha Dambuza (with judges Caroline Nicholls and Mahendra Chetty concurring) said she did not believe that Montshiwa should be sent back to the High Court to make a fresh application for leave to appeal. Instead, the court should exercise its inherent powers under the Constitution to consider the merits of the application to \u201cavoid multiple fruitless court proceedings between the same parties\u201d.<\/p>\n<div class=\"editor-summary\"><strong>Read the full judgment <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/documents\/sca_law_graduate.pdf\">here<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<p>Judge Dumbuza said she was not persuaded that another court would reach a different conclusion about Motshiwa\u2019s fitness to become a legal practitioner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe courts in this country and elsewhere have identified certain qualities for a fit and proper person as envisaged in the Legal Practice Act. These include integrity, hard work, dignity, honesty, fairness and respect for legal order,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>She said, while the expression \u201cfit and proper\u201d was not defined in the act, one of its objectives was to enhance and maintain appropriate standards of professional practice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a legal practitioner, Mr Montshiwa would be expected to conduct himself with the highest degree of integrity \u2026 insulting vulgar and disparaging language by a legal practitioner cannot be tolerated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Judge Dambuza said it appeared from the record that Montshiwa\u2019s conduct fell far short of what was expected.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is apparent that his appreciation of the processes, procedures and decorum of our courts is woefully deficient,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>In response to opposition to his admission by attorney Jerry Sithole, Montshiwa had claimed it resulted from \u201cbitterness and stupidity\u201d and was an \u201cidiotic move \u2026 motivated by stupidity\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>When another attorney, J Nkomo, filed an application to intervene in the admission proceedings in order to place on record certain conduct by Montshiwa in the Maintenance Court, Montshiwa had referred to the application as \u201cidiotic\u201d \u201cbarbaric\u201d and what would be expected from a \u201cpassionate first year law student\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Dambuza said Montshiwa had written to the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services requesting that he establish a commission of inquiry to investigate \u201cthe relationship between Mr Nkomo and the North West High Court Bench\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The Judge President of the North West division at the time was also not spared from Montshiwa\u2019s tirade, who described her leadership as \u201ca mockery\u201d. He also laid a criminal complaint against her.<\/p>\n<p>He also directed insults at judges who heard his application for admission and accused them of bias and collusion with the Judge President.<\/p>\n<p>In the SCA, he continued with his vitriolic attacks \u201call of which demonstrates his lack of appreciation of the ethos and principles that govern the legal profession and the courts of this country\u201d, said Judge Dambuza.<\/p>\n<p>She cited in her judgment <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/restoring-dignity-to-our-courts-the-duties-legal-practitioners\/\">an article<\/a> published on GroundUp, in which Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Rishi Seegobin stated that \u201cthe effective functioning of our courts and the proper administration of justice are highly dependent on how legal practitioners go about discharging [their duty to the court]\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Dambuza said Montshiwa did not dispute the conduct and utterances attributed to him but only maintained that his conduct was not inappropriate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat cannot be so \u2026 Against this background no other court would find differently from the decision of the High Court,\u201d she said, dismissing the application for leave to appeal, with costs.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/insulting-language-by-a-lawyer-cannot-be-tolerated-in-court-say-sca.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Illustration: Lisa Nelson A bad tempered, disrespectful law graduate is not fit and proper to be admitted as an attorney, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) has ruled. Goane Jack Siamisang Montshiwa had insulted judges and attorneys. Sending a strong message, the judge noted \u201chis lack of appreciation of the ethos and principles that govern [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":252091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-252090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/insulting-language-by-a-lawyer-cannot-be-tolerated-in-court-say-sca.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}