Historical municipal debt for the account of new owners declared unconstitutional The North Gauteng High Court passed an important judgment on 7 November 2016 holding that a municipality may not hold a property owner liable for a previous owner's historical municipal debts. The court further stated that a new owner cannot be held liable for the payment of the historical debt accumulation by previous owners and the municipality should not be entitled to refuse the rendering of services to such person, as this will result in a disregard of the municipality's constitutional duty to ensure the provision of services to a community member entitled thereto and would result in the exercise of a public power without any legal authority. The court concluded that section 118(3) of the Act is unconstitutional to the extent that it applies to new or subsequent owners of a property and that the practice of holding new owners liable for historical debts is unconstitutional and invalid. In addition, any disconnection, suspension, restriction or withdrawal of municipal services where no debt exists in respect of municipal services between the municipality and the said customer constitutes conduct that is unconstitutional and invalid. The High Court has clearly ruled on issues which the Supreme Court of Appeal ("SCA") in the case of City of Tshwane v T Mathabathe (2013) had not been asked to decide upon, namely whether or not a new owner can be liable for historical debts or whether a municipality is entitled to terminate services because of a previous owners debts due to the municipality. The SCA judgment does however still suggest that the municipality can proceed to obtain an appropriate court order and sell a property in execution to collect historic debt. It is therefore important to note that the High Court judgment is only binding upon the jurisdiction of North Gauteng High Court and we do await further cases to be decided. Hopefully the Constitutional Court will be approached to pronounce judgment to finally settle these issues. See
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