In Children’s Resource Centre Trust v Pioneer Food, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) handed down a landmark judgment setting out the procedural requirements for instituting a class action. The SCA also gave clear guidance on when someone can pursue a class action.

Why should you care about this judgment?

We recently posted an article about trends in data protection litigation around the world. In this article we discussed class actions as being one of the ways you could find yourself in court for data protection litigation. While this judgment dealt with a different set of facts, in the data protection context, a group of data subjects might accuse you of infringing their personal data rights. And, unless you can afford to settle, you may have a class action on your hands.

As class actions are quite popular in other parts of the world, we’ve shared this judgment as it is the only one that provides clear guidelines on how someone can initiate class actions in South Africa. This judgment provides good guidance from a superior court on how to correctly file for a class action.

Digest

Section 38(c) of the Constitution provides that “anyone acting as a member of, or in the interest of, a group or class of persons” has the right to approach a court if they feel that someone infringed or threatened a right in the Bill of Rights.

In this matter, several NGOs and five individual consumers applied to the High Court for the certification of a class action against three of the major bread producers. The NGOs and consumers brought the application because of anti-competitive conduct.

The SCA held that class actions should be recognised in two scenarios:

  1. In respect of constitutional claims, and
  2. In any other case where a class action would be the most appropriate means of litigating the claims of the members of the class.

Requirements for class actions

The SCA set out the requirements for bringing a class action:

  • Before anyone issues summons, there is a need for certification by the court. The court must be able to handle the certification on papers alone.
  • The court must be satisfied that there-
    • is an objectively identifiable class;
    • is a cause of action raising a “triable issue”, and
    • are common issues that a court can deal with in the interests of all members of the class.
  • There must be appropriate procedures for distributing damages to the members of the class.
  • The representatives must be suitable to conduct the litigation on behalf of the class.

The SCA remitted the case back to the High court to allow the NGOs and consumers to amend their application to comply with the requirements for a class action.

Actions you can take

  • You can dive into the details of this judgment by downloading the full judgment.
  • Keep up to date with data protection litigation trends in South Africa by joining our data protection programme. We summarise the key learnings from data protection cases we come across and update programme frequently.