Law v Knysna Municipality

The plaintiff, a 72-year-old man, sued the defendant municipality for damages after he fell on a concrete pedestrian walkway/ramp outside Millwood Court business centre in Knysna on 22 March 2017. The walkway ran alongside the centre, providing access from a parking area. The plaintiff parked his car near a tree, ascended the walkway to a shop, and on his return in the dark, mistook another vehicle for his and stepped off the walkway at a point where the drop was about 60 cm—double the height where he had stepped on—causing him to fall forward and sustain injuries including a fractured malleolus and torn Achilles tendon. The walkway was built by the centre's owners on municipal land as an encroachment. Building plans approved in 1994 required a balustrade only for the steep section near Main Road, not the gentler section where the incident occurred. A balustrade later extended along the walkway was removed sometime between 2014 and the incident. The municipality had historical correspondence about balustrade safety issues in 1994-1995 and 2003, but no evidence linked these to the incident location.

• Whether the municipality owed a legal duty to the plaintiff to take steps to prevent the harm.
• Whether the municipality's omission was wrongful.
• Whether the municipality was negligent.
• Whether section 23 of the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act exempts the municipality from liability.

The action is dismissed with costs, including the costs of counsel, on scale B.

A municipality does not automatically owe a legal duty to the public to construct, maintain, or erect guardrails on a pedestrian walkway that is built by private owners on municipal land to serve a commercial centre, particularly where the walkway is not a general public thoroughfare, the risk was not inherent in the structure but arose from the plaintiff's own failure to keep a proper lookout, and public policy considerations weigh against imposing such a burden on ratepayers.

Section 23 of the NBRSA does not exempt a municipality from liability for omissions; it only provides an indemnity in defined instances where harm results from positive acts such as approval of building plans, issue of certificates, or performance of acts under the Act.

This case clarifies the limits of municipal liability for omissions on private walkways encroaching on public land, emphasising that the legal convictions of the community and public policy do not require municipalities to bear the cost of safety measures for privately-used facilities. It reinforces that wrongfulness and negligence must be assessed separately and that a plaintiff's own failure to keep a proper lookout can negate liability. It also provides a rare judicial interpretation of section 23 of the NBRSA, holding that it does not exempt municipalities from common-law liability for omissions.