Supreme Court of Appeal - 2004/570 / Hearing date: 16 November 2005
Judgment date: 30 November 2005
Retiree status of former SABC employees in relation to medical scheme and concessionary television licences ─ medical scheme subsidy and concessionary television licences unilaterally withdrawn by the SABC ─ SABC relying on absence of authority in respect of the grant of retiree status ─ former employees relying on ostensible authority ─ requirements met.
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On 30 November 2005 the Supreme Court of Appeal handed down judgment in South African Broadcasting Corporation v Fred P Coop and others confirming the order of the Johannesburg High Court reinstating a medical scheme subsidy and a concessionary television licence to 93 former employees, which the SABC had unilaterally withdrawn. The SCA held that the former employees who had served the SABC for a substantial part of their lives (in some instances for longer than three decades) were entitled to be treated as were all SABC retirees and were thus entitled to the continuation of the subsidy and the concessionary television licence.
The SCA rejected the SABC’s submission that these benefits had been granted without proper authorisation and that it had been part of a modus operandi of some top management figures to ensure benefits for a select group of senior white employees to which they were rightfully not entitled.
The SCA did not consider it necessary to determine the extent (into the future) of the former employees’ rights to the subsidy and the concessionary television licences. It thus did not consider it necessary, in the circumstances of the case, to decide whether the subsidy and the concessionary television licences were gratuities or a contractual entitlement. It decided the matter on the basis that the former employees were treated differently from other retirees and were consequently entitled to reinstatement of these benefits.
Whilst the court understood the trial court’s sense that the SABC had acted in an unjustifiably high-handed and unconscionable manner, it nevertheless was of the view that the punitive costs order of attorney-client costs was too severe a reaction and varied the costs order to limit it to the usual costs order.