Luna Meubel v Makin
Luna Meubel Vervaardigers (Edms) Bpk v Makin and Another (t/a Makin's Furniture Manufacturers) is an important case in South African civil procedure: the leading case, in fact, on the question of how and when an urgent application may be brought. It was heard in the Witwatersrand Local Division by Coetzee J on December 13, 1976, and judgment handed down the following day. BEM du Toit (of De Villiers, Scholtz & Van der Walt) appeared for the applicant; there was no appearance for the respondents. The case concerned an urgent application for an interdict and revolved  around the question of what, exactly, urgency involves—specifically, when the established filing and sitting times of the court may be departed from. Coetzee J held that practitioners must carefully determine whether a greater or lesser degree of relaxation of the Rules and practice of the court is required. Judgment. Coetzee J found that "urgency" in respect of urgent applications, which are not "ex parte" applications under Rule of Court 6(4), involves, mainly, the abridgement of times prescribed by the Rules, and, secondly, the departure from established filing and sitting times of the court. He held that the following factors , in ascending order of urgency, must be borne in mind: Practitioners, Coetzee J held, should carefully analyse the facts of each case to determine, for the purposes of setting the case down for hearing, whether a greater or lesser degree of relaxation of the Rules and of the ordinary practice of the court is required. The degree of relaxation should not be greater than the exigency of the case demands. It must be commensurate with that exigency. Mere lip service to the requirements of Rule 6(12)(b) will not do; an applicant must make out a case in the founding affidavit  to justify the particular extent of the departure from the norm, which is involved in the time and day for which the matter be set down.