A man who injured his head 22 years ago after falling from a moving train has been allowed to claim damages from the Passenger Rail Agency of SA.
Denzil Reyners, through a curator appointed to help him with his legal affairs, set out to claim damages from Prasa in 2013 – 12 years after his fall, and several years after Prasa’s three-year prescription for legal cases.
The matter ended up in court again this week, where the SCA considered whether Reyners’s mental condition impacted on his ability to undertake legal proceedings.
Reyners’s curator argued that his client’s mental defect prevented him from having knowledge of what had happened to him, as he was of unsound mind, incapable of managing his own affairs and without the capacity to litigate.
After the accident, Reyners continued to live with his parents and resumed his unskilled job at The Argus newspaper for six months, before working as an unqualified carpenter and a painter, and then becoming a father to two children.
It was a neighbour who later informed him about the possibility of lodging a claim against Prasa and referred him to an attorney. This as his family was also unaware that they could sue for damages.
The curator contested that the prescription would only have started running against Reyners in February 2013, when he was placed under curatorship.
The SCA noted that Reyners had been under an impediment since the injury and required the appointment of a curator to act on his behalf.
Two judges wrote separate concurring judgments, in which they found a doctor’s testimony to be unconvincing because he did not explain how Reyners could manage multiple jobs, some lasting a year, while supposedly needing a curator.
Prasa said it had received the judgment and its legal department was studying it.
Cape Argus