STEYN J

Brink set down for hearing on the same day three inter-related opposed applications against Legal Aid South Africa ('LASA') for orders compelling it to hand over records that he'd duly requested under the Promotion of Access to Information Act ('PAIA').

Notified immediately of this date for the argument of the cases, months before the hearing, LASA responded by asking Brink to remove the matters from the roll because its favourite counsel was booked for another case that day and wasn't available.

In view of how LASA had already delayed the case for a year by maliciously (and unsuccessfully) trying to interdict Brink from proceeding with it, Brink refused this requested indulgence.

Instead of briefing other counsel in the months it had available to do so -- as the settled case law in such situations obliged it to do -- LASA left it to the last minute to apply to court for the postponent of the Brink's PAIA cases, and moved its application on the big day that they were to be heard.

The matter was allocated to Mrs Esther Steyn J. As the recording of the oral proceedings in court will vouch, she bristled with hostile prejudice towards Brink, to his opposition to LASA's postponement application, and to his PAIA applications right from the get-go, imagining apparently that Brink could and would be cowed by her snarling unpleasantness into backing down.

During the argument of the postponement application, it became apparent to Brink that she wasn't on top of the issues in the main PAIA cases and hadn't grasped their exceptional gravity.

Brink hinted at this in stating, 'Having read the papers, you'll appreciate that [...]'.

Steyn J went off like a volcano, and rebuked his 'unacceptable and unprofessional' (or similar words) insinuation that she hadn't read the papers.

Only, she hadn't.

Brink's examination of the court files in his PAIA case some months later in preparation for the the next court date revealed that contrary to her indignant protesting too much and her bossy-girl offence-as-defence gambit to mask her disgraceful judicial indolence, in truth and in fact Steyn J indeed hadn't read the papers just as Brink had correctly sensed in court.

Or to be more exact, the file in the first of the three PAIA cases shows that Steyn J had duly begun reading the the papers with commendable diligence and close attention, evinced by her marking of key passages of Brink's founding affidavit with her highlighter pen and bookmarking especially important pages with coloured flags, before suddenly quitting this preparation just a few pages in.

Is this why she strangely aggressively gunned at Brink for duly standing on and rightfully refusing to give up his duly obtained date for the argument of his cases, which court date was duly allocated by the registrar and which Brink had duly conveyed to LASA immediately; for insisting that the case proceed; and for not granting LASA the indulgence it demanded, namely to remove the cases from the court roll, merely because its favourite counsel, who'd just lost LASA's malicious interdict case against Brink, was busy with another case in another court in another city on the appointed day?

Which inconvenience was no proper basis for a postponement under law, as is elementary to any trial lawyer, especially seeing as LASA had known of his unavailability right from the start, many months earlier, and hadn't bothered seeking other counsel, confident that the court would naturally come down on its side, since the case put Mlambo JP directly in the firing line.

Is it because indeed she hadn't read the papers, as Brink had suggested to her, and so wasn't prepared to hear the cases, and was happy to kick it down the road and offload it onto another judge?

After Steyn J postponed Brink's three PAIA cases, he met the late Senior State Advocate Adelaide Watt outside the courthouse. She told him that she knew about the cases because she'd been in Steyn J's chambers the day before, and that Steyn J had spoken about them disparagingly. (This squares with her hostile attitude towards Brink and his cases from the moment she sat down in court, making no secret at all of the fact that she'd pre-decided to grant LASA's application for a postponement even before the argument began.) Could this be why Adv Watt then remarked to Brink with startling candour, 'I don't like her, she's dishonest.'

***