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Facts

Mr Patel transferred Mr Mirza £620,000 to bet on shares in RBS using insider information which Mr Mirza hoped to obtain from RBS contacts. The inside information did not come through and Mr Mirza refused to return the sums to Mr Patel. Mr Patel subsequently sued Mr Mirza for recovery of the £620,000 on the
basis of unjust enrichment. 

Facts

This case related to the leasehold ownership of hotel rooms. The applicants were the leaseholders of the hotel rooms and the respondent companies the lessors.

Facts

C’s appeal of his bankruptcy order failed. He then argued that pursuant to r 12.2(1) of the Insolvency Rules 1986 (‘IR 12.2’) as a matter of law the costs of the unsuccessful appeal should be treated as an expense of the bankruptcy estate; alternatively they were aprovable debt in the bankruptcy. D (the PC) contended that IR 7.51A gave the court an unfettered discretion as to the form of order and sought costs against C personally as a post-bankruptcy liability.

This article was first published in Practical Law.

With the long-awaited decision of the Court of Appeal in Horton v Henry, the Looking Glass decision in Raithatha v Williamson is finally laid to rest.

1. Introduction

The Insolvency Rules 2016 (“the 2016 Rules”) were published and laid before parliament on 25 October 2016. The rules will come in to force on 6 April 2017. The following note summarises the key features of the rules. For further detail the reader is referred to the following sources:

Explanatory memorandum

Sometimes different bits of legislation are, on the face of it, in conflict with each other. This is specially so when new law is introduced. The impact of new law on old law sets up contradictions, which the courts have to sort out. An interesting recent example arose in the context of business rescue.

The issue in this case was whether a payment of R389 593.49 by Ditona – a company being wound-up – to another company Eravin, was recoverable by Ditona’s liquidators as a void disposition or unrecoverable because, it was a pre-business rescue debt, which may not be enforced.

Finally a decision on whether a bankrupt can be compelled to draw down a pension: The Court of Appeal has finally handed down its long-awaited judgment in Horton v Henry [2016] EWCA Civ. 989, the case determining whether a Trustee in Bankruptcy can compel a Bankrupt to draw down his pension even though the pension is not in payment because the Bankrupt has elected not to call it down.  

On 21 September 2016, the Western Cape High Court (Court) handed down judgement in the case of Tyre Corporation Cape Town (Pty) Ltd and Others v GT Logistics (Pty) Ltd and Others (Rogers J) [2016] ZAWCHC 124 in terms of which the Court considered, among other questions, the following:

It is now generally accepted that the Companies Act, No 71 of 2008 (Act) is an overhaul of our corporate law landscape. This shift is even more evident with the introduction of a new business rescue regime and along with it, the general moratorium on legal proceedings against a company in business rescue.

Section 133 of the Act provides that no legal proceedings including enforcement action may commence or continue against a company undergoing business rescue, save where amongst other exceptions, consent is granted by the court or obtained from the business rescue practitioner.

Prescription is one word which every creditor (and attorney) dread. Prescription extinguishes a debt and there is very little a creditor can do once that proverbial ship has sailed.

The Prescription Act, No 68 of 1969 (Prescription Act), on a good day, has its challenges, but the situation is even more uncertain when an insolvent estate is concerned.

Rogers J, with Nuku J concurring, in the recent judgment of Van Deventer and Another v Nedbank Ltd 2016 (3) SA 622 (WCC) shed some very needed light on this issue.