The Bobroffs delay and frustrate court proceedings

ANT KATZ

“Despite repeated admonitions from several judges, (they) persisted in using every possible avenue to delay, frustrate and avoid facing up to the serious charges of a practice-wide conduct of (overcharging) clients, contravening the Contingency Fees Act… and other unprofessional, dishonourable and even fraudulent conduct,” said Judge Natvarlal Ranchod in the Pretoria High Court last month.

The judge was spelling out the reasons for the decision to strike the names of father-and-son personal injury lawyers Ronald and Darren Bobroff, off the role of attorneys.

“In so far as the Bobroff’s are concerned,” Ranchod said, “the only appropriate sanction was to strike their names… “

His judgment listed a litany of professional misdemeanours by the Bobroffs and holds them accountable for most of the costs.

While he acknowledged that the Bobroffs’ “unethical conduct warranted them to pay the bulk of the legal costs”, it said the Law Society should also “feel the brunt of its omission to act sooner”.

In terms of the cost order on this matter, the Law Society was ordered to foot 25 per cent of the legal bill, while the Bobroffs had to pay 75 per cent.

The reasons for their being struck off the role listed a plethora of contraventions, “the Law Society’s inspectors identified”. These included: “Contraventions of the Attorneys Act and the Law Society’s rules with regard to the keeping of proper books of account; The firm failed to ensure that trust money was kept separate from other money; the firm failed to pay amounts due to clients within a reasonable time; and accounting records were not retained.”

However, this is not the only legal woe facing the Bobroffs right now. They are in all sorts of bother in a number of other court proceedings playing out simultaneously. 

In fact, the final sequestration of the Bobroffs’ estates is being heard In the Johannesburg High Court. The two fled South Africa for Australia last year, one day before they had promised to hand themselves over to the Hawks.

Anthony Millar, for the parties who wish to finalise the sequestration, is also accusing the Bobroffs of trying to bog the courts down in paperwork.

The pair, who have been provisionally sequestrated, are hampering the case by filing an ever-growing pile of papers, says Millar. They have filed another 174 pages of evidence which required applicants to file another 94-page affidavit in reply.

Millar, a former president of the Law Society, issued a scathing attack, accusing the Bobroffs of having “a stratagem to overwhelm not only the applicants, but also this Honourable Court with papers so as to obfuscate the issues and frustrate the legal process”.

They are “not content for the matter to be adjudicated on the papers that have been already filed”, he says, but rather “persist in filing further affidavits” and introducing new matters.

Millar “question(s) the bona fides” of the Bobroffs and says that “three points emerge clearly from the Bobroffs’ further affidavits”: the whereabouts of Darren Bobroff and concealment of assets; the refusal to properly respond to a notice served in June; and the role of Ronald’s wife, Elaine.

Millar says he believes the Bobroffs are “living off the proceeds of monies sent from South Africa to Australia” and “all the assets that the (Bobroffs) have in Australia, originate from South Africa” and should form part of the insolvent estates in this country.

Apart from the painstakingly slow final sequestration process, the Bobroffs are also integral to several other legal matters before the courts, including:

• Forensic consultant Paul O’Sullivan and Melissa Naidu’s kidnap and extortion trial in the Randburg Magistrate’s Court, which began in March. Their alleged victim was Bobroff employee and whistle-blower, Cora van der Merwe. This trial resumes on September 14; and
• The Bobroffs are also being sued for millions of rand by attorneys and reporters who accuse them of slander.