Defining and Bringing Clarity to Suppliers' Claims in MVA Matters

Abstract

A supplier is referred to in section 17(5) of the Road Accident Fund Act 56 of 1996, and the Road Accident Fund Amendment Act 19 of 2005 as, “the person who provides the accommodation or treatment or rendered the service or supplied the goods” to the injured or deceased road accident victim (third party). In practice the collective word “suppliers” refers to, but is not limited to, medical professionals, hospitals and medical aid institutions. The supplier, as defined, could have already rendered medical services or would still in future render medical services to the injured third party, as section 17(4) of the principal Act and the amendment Act also provides for undertakings in respect of future medical services. The provisions of section 17(5) of the principal Act and the amendment Act regulate suppliers' claims. This provision not only provides the supplier with an optional, alternative procedural right to claim payment of its account “direct[ly] from the Fund or agent on a prescribed form”, but further states that such supplier's claim "shall be subject mutatis mutandis to the provisions applicable to the third party concerned, and may not exceed the amount which the third party could, but for this subsection, have recovered". Legal practitioners have criticized the unsatisfactory interpretation of the above-mentioned two phrases by the courts in recent decisions. In this note these two phrases are addressed in the hope of bringing some clarity among the confusion and uncertainty.