CHIDAWU & ORS v SHAH & ORS 2011 (2) ZLR 426 (H)

Flynote

Practice and procedure — application — urgent — certificate of urgency — duty of legal practitioner — must personally have applied his mind thereto and honestly believe the matter to be urgent — certificate cannot be uninformed endorsement of another legal practitioner's opinion — delay in bringing an urgent application — explanation for delay required in D supporting affidavit

Headnote

For the purposes of r 244 of the High Court Rules 1971 (RGN 1047 of 1971), an urgent chamber application can only properly be before the court or be heard on an urgent basis, if the applicant is legally represented, if a legal practitioner files a certificate certifying its urgency. If the certificate filed is not the product of the legal practitioner who purports to have applied his mind thereto, it is patently inadequate, to the extent of its not being a valid certificate. The case cannot be heard on an urgent basis and will, in fact, be improperly before the court. It will be similar to a case where a legally represented applicant comes to court without a legal practitioner's certificate of urgency. Such an application would be improperly before the court and should be dismissed.

A certificate of urgency must be prepared by a legal practitioner after personally carefully assessing the urgency of the application. It should be based on his or her honour. It should not be an uninformed endorsement of another legal practitioner's previous opinion.

"What constitutes urgency is not only the imminent arrival of the day of reckoning; a matter is urgent, if at the time the need to act arises, the matter cannot wait. Urgency which stems from a deliberate or careless abstention from action until the deadline draws near is not the type of urgency contemplated by the rules. It necessarily follows, that the