How safe should a sidewalk be? The evergreen question of a municipality's liability for negligent omissions : Butise v City of Johannesburg 2011 6 SA 196 (GSJ)

Abstract

One can safely postulate that the issue of determining the wrongfulness of an omission on the part of a municipality in respect of damage suffered by a member of the public as a result of a dangerous situation which arose due to the fact that roads and sidewalks under its control have fallen into a state of disrepair, finally stabilised slightly more than ten years ago when the supreme court of appeal handed down its seminal judgment in Cape Town Municipality v Bakkerud (2000 3 SA 1049 (SCA)). Before that time, the pendulum had swung from a position of strong immunity for municipalities (see eg Halliwell v Johannesburg Municipal Council 1912 AD 659; Moulang v Port Elizabeth Municipality 1958 2 SA 518 (A)) to a high-water mark of an almost blanket liability for omissions (eg in the judgment of Brand J in the court a quo in the Bakkerud case: Cape Town Municipality v Bakkerud 1997 4 SA 356 (C)).