City of Johannesburg v Changing Tides 74 (Pty) Ltd

The City of Johannesburg applied for leave to appeal against the High Court’s substantive judgment and order of 14 March 2025, which held the City delictually liable and awarded damages to Changing Tides 74 (Pty) Ltd arising from the City’s failure to provide emergency accommodation to evictees. The City contended that the court erred in its approach to wrongfulness in delict and conflated wrongfulness with fault, and that the judgment raised significant constitutional and public-interest issues affecting local authorities nationally. An ancillary issue concerned a patent error in the order relating to mora interest, as interest from date of summons to August 2024 had already been included in the damages calculation by agreement between the parties’ experts.

Leave to appeal was granted to the Supreme Court of Appeal. Paragraph 40.1 of the original judgment was amended to provide that the City must pay damages of R12,374,993.00 together with mora interest at 11.75% per annum from the date of judgment to the date of final payment. Costs were ordered to be costs in the cause.

The decision is significant procedurally as it confirms that disputes concerning delictual liability of municipalities for failures linked to constitutional housing obligations may raise issues of sufficient public and constitutional importance to warrant appellate consideration. It also illustrates the High Court’s willingness to correct patent errors in monetary and interest orders at the leave-to-appeal stage.