When Ramatharee Pather and her lawyers launched a claim against Gauteng’s MEC for health, Qedani Mahlangu, the last thing they would have expected was an answer from the state rewriting legal history.Pather’s action relates to what she alleges was a botched operation carried out at a state hospital. Her attorney has confirmed that the matter would be heard in the high court later this month but declined to give any other details of her claim, saying it might prejudice the matter.In essence her claim was straightforward and, one would have thought, uncontentious: the MEC had a legal duty to ensure that medical care would be given to Pather "with such skill, care and diligence" as are expected of medical personnel.Not so, said the state attorney in the written plea filed in court on behalf of the MEC. "It is denied that [the MEC] owes such a duty of care to [Pather]."To this extraordinary denial the MEC then added another astounding assertion: there was no law in SA that "guarantees p...
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