PRETORIA. The High Court in Pretoria has declared Advertising Digital Services (Pty) Ltd (ADS) and its director, Johan Hendrik Reynders, vexatious litigants, effectively barring them from instituting further legal proceedings against The Standard Bank of South Africa Limited and its former employee, Cornelius Adolf Du Plessis, without prior leave of the court.
The judgment, delivered by Judge A. Millar, marks the culmination of a legal saga spanning over 22 years.
It is improper, abusive and vexatious to refuse to accept the decisions of the Court
The dispute originated in 2003 when ADS accused Standard Bank of misappropriating its virtual scrambled keypad technology for internet banking security, following a meeting and the signing of a non-disclosure agreement. Despite multiple rounds of litigation in the Johannesburg High Court, Supreme Court of Appeal, and Constitutional Court, ADS’s claims were repeatedly dismissed, with courts finding the technology was already in the public domain.
Judge Millar detailed how ADS and Reynders persistently recycled the same claims, often reframing them with new allegations but failing to present any reasonable grounds. The court noted that ADS had engaged several different sets of attorneys over the years, and Reynders frequently represented the company himself after attorneys withdrew. The litigation was characterized by repeated postponements, appeals, and applications, all of which were ultimately unsuccessful.
The judgment emphasized the importance of the constitutional right of access to courts but clarified that this right is not unlimited. “It is improper, abusive and vexatious to refuse to accept the decisions of the Court,” Judge Millar stated, adding that the conduct of ADS and Reynders amounted to an abuse of judicial process.
“ADS and Reynders persistently seek to undermine court orders, rules of court and directives issued by it. Litigating the self-same issue over a period of 22 years in circumstances where both the High Court, the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court have already considered and dismissed the matter. This is not the conduct of reasonable litigants seeking to assert rights.
“It is improper, abusive and vexatious to refuse to accept the decisions of the Court. Taking every point that can be taken in litigation and exhausting every appeal and when that has yielded no fruit, instituting the same proceedings against the same litigants, although clothed differently with a purported new cause of action, is by all accounts improper and abusive. The inability and failure on the part of ADS and. Reynders to accept the finality of adverse findings against them by Courts is the direct cause of the course of conduct that they have embarked upon against The Standard Bank and Du Plessis,” the judge found.
In addition to prohibiting further proceedings without court approval, the order will be published in the Government Gazette. ADS and Reynders were also ordered to pay the costs of the application on a punitive scale.
