Six Post Office workers lose their day in court after a commissioner cited a judgment that does not exist
The Labour Court has halted their unfair dismissal arbitration pending a review, and the six, who were dismissed in December 2025 and had no lawyers, must wait out a business rescue that began in July 2023 before they can be heard.
Six former South African Post Office workers who were dismissed on 2 December 2025 for alleged misconduct have lost the arbitration date they were given, through no fault of their own, and now have to wait for a business rescue that started in July 2023 to end before their unfair dismissal claims can be heard.
The Labour Court halted their CCMA arbitration in a judgment delivered on Friday, 23 October by Acting Judge Sean Snyman. The commissioner who allowed the case to proceed had relied on a Constitutional Court judgment that does not exist.
The six had referred an unfair dismissal dispute to the CCMA. The Post Office objected, arguing that the Companies Act bars legal proceedings against a company in business rescue without permission from its business rescue practitioners or the High Court. On 4 August the commissioner dismissed that objection and ruled that the six could pursue their claims.
To justify the ruling he cited a supposed Constitutional Court judgment, South African Post Office SOC Ltd (In Business Rescue) and Others v Communication Workers Union and Others, purportedly reported as [2023] ZACC 40. According to the CCMA ruling, that judgment established that business rescue did not suspend labour legislation or deprive employees of access to statutory dispute resolution.
Snyman found the citation actually belongs to an unrelated Constitutional Court judgment about immigration legislation and spousal visas. He searched SAFLII and other legal repositories and found no trace of the Post Office judgment. “The undeniable reality is that the ruling of the first respondent is squarely founded on purported reasoning contained in a judgment that does not exist,” he said.
He concluded that the commissioner appeared to have used artificial intelligence to find authority for his reasoning without checking it. “It appears that first respondent must have relied on AI in seeking to find substantiation for his reasoning,” the judge said. The court did not identify a platform and did not establish through direct evidence which technology was used.
Snyman found the failure to verify the authority was a serious breach of the diligence and competence expected of arbitrators. “Considering that this non-existed legal authority lies at the heart of the conclusion that he ultimately came to, this is a fundamental failure of justice.”
He also found that the commissioner had misread the Companies Act by disregarding the moratorium on legal proceedings against a company in business rescue, and had failed to deal with the Post Office’s objection that its business rescue practitioners had not been joined to the arbitration.
The arbitration is now halted until the Post Office’s separate application to review and set aside the CCMA ruling is decided. The six workers have not lost their claims. They may pursue them once business rescue ends, or sooner if the necessary permission is granted.
They were not legally represented, and Snyman made no order as to costs, finding the circumstances did not justify penalising them for pursuing their claims. That is the one protection the judgment gives them. What it does not give them is a hearing date.
The practical position for the six is a claim that survives but cannot move. Their dismissal stands while the review runs and while the Post Office remains in business rescue, a process that has been under way since July 2023. For a worker who has already been out of a job since December, the difference between a claim that exists and a claim that can be heard is a wage.
As Sunday World reported on 27 October, the case has drawn attention to fabricated legal authorities reaching South African courts. Snyman quoted an earlier judgment on the danger of taking machine output at face value: “Such tools can produce apparently coherent and plausible responses to prompts, but those coherent and plausible responses may turn out to be entirely incorrect.”
He said arbitrators who use AI for legal research must confirm that the judgments they cite exist, and must read them to check that they support the proposition being attributed to them. He called for a zero-tolerance approach, warning that such failures threaten public confidence in labour dispute resolution.
The case also turns on a point of law that will matter to every worker at a company in business rescue, which is that the moratorium on legal proceedings is real and the CCMA cannot simply wave it aside. The commissioner’s error ran in two directions at once, inventing authority to get past the Companies Act and misreading the Act itself.
For the six, the outcome is a review application they are not parties to in any real sense, a business rescue they cannot influence, and a costs order they were spared. The Labour Court has not yet set a date for the review.
