Financial Mail (Pty) Ltd v Registrar of Insurance and Others

• Jurisdiction: South Africa
• Judge: Marais J
• Judgment Date: 10 December 1965
• Citation: 1966 (2) SA 219 (W)
• Hearing Date: 07 April 1964
• Court: Witwatersrand Local Division

Marais, J.:

The relief claimed in this petition has been granted. There was no opposition. At the time of making the order it was intimated that, if the applicant should so wish, reasons would be furnished. These now follow.

Marais J

The petition was brought by the publishers of a weekly journal, The Financial Mail, a publication devoted to matters of public interest in the fields of finance, financial institutions and investment. According to the petition, it came to the notice of the petitioners during 1963 A that the first respondent (the Registrar of Insurance) was applying to this Division for the winding-up of an insurance institution called Auto Protection Insurance Co. Ltd. The application was heard on 30th March and postponed to 9th April. It was a condition of the postponement that B the papers and proceedings were not to be made public. Apparently the matter was settled on 5th April, when the Court issued by consent an order that the proceedings, papers and orders were not to be published.

On 11th March the following year the company was placed under judicial management, and the second respondent was appointed judicial manager.

C The present applicant contended that, whatever the reason for the initial order against publication might have been in the first instance, the order placing the insurer under judicial management rendered further secrecy unnecessary. Rescission of the order of 5th April was asked for, D as well as an order on the third respondent (the Registrar of this Division) to allow the applicant access to the records of the proceedings.

The orders were granted as prayed. No reason now exists why the public (and therefore the Press) should not be permitted to learn the nature and details of the proceedings against the company. The first respondent E consented to judgment, and the judicial manager did not oppose the application.

Until 1813, in consonance with the then universal practice in Holland (van der Linden, Koopmans Handboek III, 1806), whilst judgments and orders of the Cape courts had to be pronounced in public, evidence and F argument in trial cases were heard in camera, with only the parties and their lawyers in attendance. The British Governor of the Cape, in 1813, issued a proclamation requiring all judicial proceedings in future to be carried on with open doors as a matter of 'essential utility, as well as the dignity of the administration of justice'; it would imprint on the minds of...