How we took two defamatory posts off the internet in three days, without suing for damages and without litigating the allegations against our client, and secured a judgment that sets out on decided facts exactly what the law requires before an allegation is published online.
THE MATTER
On 6 and 7 November 2025, Chad Nicolas Thomas of IRS Forensic Investigations (Pty) Ltd published two posts on his firm's public Facebook page stating that our client's law firm had done a runner, and that trust funds had been allocated to non-existent commodities. Our client, Adriaan de Waal, an attorney of some thirty years' standing, was relocating his practice from Tygervalley to Tyger Waterfront. The move was planned, lawful and communicated to his clients.
Within hours the posts had been shared across numerous other public and professional Facebook groups. Readers called the profession criminals with law degrees and thieving thugs in suits, and one asked whether they had stolen everyone's trust money. For a practising attorney this is not reputational inconvenience. Citing the Supreme Court of Appeal in Vassen, the court held that even an insinuation of trust account theft is a death knell for his name and practice.
The full narrative, including what the investigator saw at the premises and the verification he did not carry out, is set out in our media release of 28 August. This case study deals with something the release does not: how the matter was run.
THE STRATEGY
Four decisions determined the outcome, and three of them were taken before any papers were drafted.
We did not sue for damages. This is the decision most clients expect us to take and it would have been the wrong one. A damages action would have taken years to reach trial on the current rolls, and at the end of it our client would have been compensated for a reputation that no longer existed, in a practice that might not have survived the wait. The court later put the point better than we could: a future claim for damages cannot restore the wildfire effect of a social media campaign. We sought instead what actually repairs the injury, which is removal and correction in the same place, to the same audience, as fast as a court can order it.
We demanded removal immediately, and in writing. From 7 November, by letter of demand and by WhatsApp. This was not correspondence for its own sake. A demand for removal creates the record on which a costs order is later built, and it puts the publisher to an election. What came back was not removal. It was a proposal to meet so that our client could clear his name.
We treated that answer as the end of negotiation, not the start of it. A publisher who declines to remove an untrue statement and offers instead to negotiate about it has handed you your case. The court said so in terms: the first respondent effectively refused to delete the posts, or sought to bargain before doing so, which amounts to the same thing. That finding is what carried the punitive costs order. We launched urgently on 8 November and the interim order was granted on 9 November, three days after the first publication.
We built the return case on one question. Not whether the allegation was true, which invites a trial on the underlying investigation, but what verification this publisher actually carried out before publishing. That question is answerable on the respondents' own affidavits, it does not require our client to prove a negative, and it puts the standard of care in issue rather than the merits of the investigation. It also meant the court could decide the matter on the papers under Plascon-Evans without a referral to oral evidence, which is what kept the timeline short.
The result of framing it that way is a judgment about publication rather than about our client. The court expressly declined to determine the merits of the underlying investigation. Our client was vindicated without ever having to litigate the allegations made against him.
THE OUTCOME
The matter was heard on 5 May 2026 and judgment was delivered on 21 August 2026. Every defence failed.
Truth and public interest failed: the allegation was objectively false, and there is no public interest in publishing untrue and unverified statements about an experienced attorney. Fair comment failed: the court found the posts unnecessary, self-serving and sensationalist, drew the irresistible inference that the intention was to harm our client's reputation, and described the conduct as self-indulgent sensationalism. Honest belief failed: the test in our law is objective, not the publisher's subjective belief in his own truth. The SLAPP defence failed: the application had merit and amounted to a vindication of rights.
The court also refused to rely on the respondents' only source, a man who was himself the subject of their fraud investigation, who declined to commit his allegations to a signed statement, and who could not say what had become of the money. It held that an ongoing investigation does not make the allegations in it true.
The order made the interim relief final, declared both publications defamatory and unlawful, compelled removal within 24 hours, and compelled an unconditional retraction and apology on the same Facebook page, pinned or kept as the top post for no less than seven continuous days and carrying a link to the judgment. Costs were awarded jointly and severally on the attorney and client scale, the court holding that our client should not be left out of pocket for what it described as reckless and malicious conduct.
Every head of relief sought was granted.
The judgment's value extends well beyond this matter. It lists, on decided facts, the verification a publisher is expected to carry out: telephone the number on the letterhead, send an email, contact the regulator, approach the landlord, ask a neighbouring business, contact the subject. The court held that these could have been performed in the space of another few hours or a day, and that no reason was given for the need to publish at all.
PUBLIC RECORD & CITATIONS
Adriaan de Waal and Another v Chad Nicolas Thomas and Others, Western Cape Division, Cape Town, case number 2025-212089. Judgment of Mangcu-Lockwood J, heard 5 May 2026, delivered 21 August 2026.
Authorities applied: National Media Ltd and Others v Bogoshi 1998 (4) SA 1196 (SCA), on the reasonableness of publication; Vassen v Law Society of the Cape of Good Hope 1998 (4) SA 532 (SCA), on the standing of an attorney; Setlogelo v Setlogelo 1914 AD 221, on the requirements for a final interdict; Mineral Sands Resources (Pty) Ltd and Others v Reddell and Others [2022] ZACC 37, on SLAPP suits; and Botha v Smuts [2024] ZACC 22 and Manuel v Economic Freedom Fighters 2019 (5) SA 210 (GJ), on the competence of removal and apology orders.
The respondents have given notice of their intention to appeal. An apology was published on 25 August 2026, and we have raised certain shortcomings in it with the respondents' attorneys.
Related reading: our media release of 28 August 2026 on the judgment, and our earlier defamation matter, Defeating Naspers: The Bird Island Defamation Case.
OUR COMMITMENT
Reputation is built over decades and can be dismantled in an afternoon. Where something untrue about you or your business has been published online, the first hours matter more than anything that follows. Preserve the evidence, including the comments. Put your demand for removal in writing. Take advice on whether urgent relief is available to you.
Johan Victor Attorneys & Litigators acts in defamation, media law and urgent interdictory relief.
Verifiable facts. Precise strategy. Definitive outcomes.