- Malesela Teffo was disbarred after the court found he lacked integrity and no longer met the threshold to be an advocate.
- Teffo then launched a variation application.
- On Monday, his application was struck from the roll and a cost order was made against him as he failed to appear in court to argue the matter.
Malesela Teffo has been hit with a cost order and his variation application struck from the roll after he failed to appear in court for the matter on Monday.
Neither Teffo nor a legal representative for him appeared in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria to argue his variation application related to the Legal Practice Council (LPC) case that saw him disbarred in September last year.
Advocate Mfesane Ka-Siboto for the LPC, which was planning to oppose the application for variation, told the court that Teffo, who was expected to represent himself, had been notified to appear in court.
Judge Mncedisi Patrick Khumalo noted that his registrar had contacted Teffo last week about his application, and that inexplicably, Teffo ordered the registrar to call him to remind him about the matter.
With Teffo absent from court on his own application, Khumalo struck the matter from the roll and awarded costs to the LPC.
Variation application
News24 previously reported that after being struck from the roll of advocates, Teffo brought a rescission application.
However, Teffo abandoned his rescission application before it could be argued in court, deciding instead, to bring a variation application, seemingly arguing that he was never disbarred because of a possible duplication or clerical error in the case numbers assigned to the matter.
In his founding affidavit to support the variation application, Teffo claims that he approached the court with the case number that was used in the LPC's application to have him disbarred, and discovered that the case involved different parties.
To Teffo, this meant that there was no dispute between him and the LPC and, as a consequence, no judgment against him, even though the matter had been argued in open court, opposed by Teffo and a judgment explicitly made against him.
Teffo said:
As a result, Teffo argued that the LPC did not file any application before the court to have him struck from the roll of advocates and wanted his name removed from the judgement and replaced with the parties cited in the other case number that had nothing to do with the LPC’s application.
Incomprehensible approach
In court papers, the LPC said there was only one case and that Teffo himself conceded to it by filing answering papers.
Explaining the different case numbers, Ka-Siboto told the court the case was initially placed on the urgent roll, where it got its first case number. It was then removed and placed on the normal roll, where the case was assigned a different number.
He said the second case number was identical to another case being heard in the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg, but maintained Teffo was always aware of this case.
The LPC explained that the issue of the case numbers was nothing more than a clerical error and had no material effect on the application to have Teffo disbarred.
A clerical issue can be condoned by the court as it is only concerned about the merits of the matter and that the right parties are before court, which was the case in the application by the LPC.
The LPC said:
The LPC asked the court to pronounce itself in the strongest terms on what it said was a flagrant abuse of the court processes.
Disbarred
In disbarring Teffo, the court assessed numerous complaints of misconduct against the advocate, who was at one stage, representing four of the accused in the Senzo Meyiwa murder trial.
The court found that Teffo had:
- Misappropriated funds received by clients.
- Taken briefs directly from clients – which is unlawful - and had been receiving monies for these briefs from clients without a fidelity fund.
- Misled different courts on multiple occasions, including when he placed a Labour Court case on an unopposed roll to secure a default judgment, knowing full well the case was opposed, and he had no brief from the instructing attorney to continue working on it.
- Breached a court order when he entered a police building despite an interdict preventing him from doing so.
The court also noted his contemptuous behaviour in court, although this did not relate to the Meyiwa trial, but rather other cases that had been reported to the LPC.
The court ultimately found that Teffo lacked a sense of responsibility, honesty, integrity and no longer met the threshold of a fit and proper advocate.