Short thrift for law firm’s complaint against Sunday Times

A five-part complaint by Ndou Attorneys against the Sunday Times has been dismissed by the press ombud. Graphic: Lisa Nelson

A complaint with the Legal Practice Council (LPC) by the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU), alleging that Ndou Attorneys had not fully accounted for R18-million in fees charged to the union, was filed in November 2024.

The Sunday Times, in an article dated 28 March 2025, reported that the union’s complaint against Ndou Attorneys — which had provided legal services to the union for five years — had been dismissed.

The Sunday Times had reported on SAMWU’s complaint to the LPC in a much earlier article, published on 15 December 2024. The headline recorded SAMWU’s main allegation that their lawyer had not fully accounted for the R18-million. The strapline made it clear the allegation was part of a “billing complaint against [a] Johannesburg law firm”, and that the law firm claimed “the union [wa]s broke and in debt”.

On the first following business day, Ndou Attorneys sent a letter of demand to the Sunday Times, threatening court action if the newspaper did not revise the article. Nothing appears to have happened in response to that letter. The article does not appear to have been revised, and the threatened court action did not materialise. But that was not the end of the matter.

Just more than three weeks later, the letter was followed by a five-part complaint to the Press Council, alleging the material omission of key facts, a failure to publish a right of reply, a failure to report on certain allegations indicating financial irregularities at the union, a failure to investigate the union’s complaint, and a failure to exercise sufficient care with regard to the firm’s reputation. All five parts of the complaint were dismissed.

At the heart of the first part of the complaint was the article’s “failure to mention that SAMWU offered to settle costs”, “indicating that their claim of not owing the firm money [was] unfounded”, as well as the firm’s intention to have the union liquidated, which would have indicated the union was in financial trouble. (A third aspect, that a payment arrangement between the parties had not been mentioned, was simply not true – the article had indeed referred to the payment arrangement.)

In dismissing this part of the complaint, the deputy press ombud –- joined by a public and a media representative –- noted that “the media’s responsibility is to provide fair coverage of a dispute, which it does by providing a fair summary of both sides’ arguments.” Not every fact or detail has to be reported: “It is only if a material detail is left out that an article can be said to be unfair and therefore in breach of the Press Code.” No such unfairness was found; the article gave a fair summary of both sides.

The second part of the complaint was dismissed quickly, with the deputy ombud finding that the firm’s position had been set out in sufficient detail.

On the third part, regarding a failure to report on an allegation of irregular spending by the union, the deputy ombud held that such allegations did not have any “impact on the core focus of the story, which is on a fees dispute between the union and the legal firm.” Accordingly, there was no need for it to be mentioned in the story.

The fourth part of the complaint concerned the Sunday Times’ failure to interrogate the substance of the union’s complaint to the LPC. The deputy ombud held that the newspaper’s obligation was to present the views of the two parties fairly, which it had done, and not to conduct an investigation into the merits of a dispute that was already “being handled by a competent authority”.

The final part of the complaint concerned the alleged failure by the newspaper to “exercise sufficient care with regard to the complainant’s reputation”. It failed to do this, Ndou Attorneys claimed, because it failed “to present the full set of facts available and therefore report[ed] in a biased way.” Given the deputy ombud’s earlier findings, this part of the complaint was also given short shrift, with the Sunday Times being found to have “exercised sufficient care with regard to reputation”.

As mentioned above, the Sunday Times reported that the complaint to the LPC was dismissed. It remains to be seen whether that will be seen by the firm to be sufficient vindication, or if it nevertheless sought leave to appeal against the deputy ombud’s ruling.

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