- Stormhaven Park trustees urgently turned to the High Court to stop three resolutions adopted by sectional owners, including one that required them to resign.
- The trustees were already subject to a R25 000 spending cap imposed by the owners. The court found they had not shown that their urgent application fell within that limit.
- The urgent application was dismissed because the trustees lacked authority to bring it and they were ordered to pay the legal costs personally.
The trustees of the Stormhaven Park body corporate must now pay the legal costs of an urgent application out of their own pockets after the High Court in the Western Cape found they had acted outside their authority.
The dispute started with a special general meeting on 6 July 2026 where members adopted three resolutions affecting the management of the sectional title scheme. The resolutions required the trustees to resign within five days after a no-confidence motion, directed them to suspend the body corporate’s manager and instructed them to stop and withdraw a High Court appeal against an adjudication order from the Community Schemes Ombud Service.
The trustees challenged the resolutions on two fronts. For Part A, they brought an urgent application for temporary protection while the main dispute was being decided. The trustees wanted the High Court to prevent the respondents from carrying out the three resolutions and from interfering with the pending High Court appeal.
In Part B, the main challenge to the resolutions, the trustees sought final orders declaring the resolutions unlawful, invalid and of no force or effect.
Judge Michelle Norton dealt with Part A. Dismissing that application did not finally determine whether the three resolutions themselves were valid.
Owners had already restricted trustees’ powers
The authority dispute centred on two resolutions adopted by owners at a special general meeting in March 2024. The first barred the manager and trustees from engaging consultants or lawyers without consulting the owners first. The second capped spending on any single purpose to R25 000, with anything higher needing a special general meeting.
The trustees did not dispute the validity of these resolutions. They argued that the resolutions did not expressly prohibit litigation and that their statutory and fiduciary duties allowed them to take legal action if needed to protect the scheme.
Judge Norton found that the Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act lets owners impose restrictions or directions at general meetings to limit what trustees can do.
The trustees therefore had to show that the 2024 resolutions did not prevent them from launching the urgent application. The judge found they had not managed to do so.
Court questions legal spending
The R25 000 limit became important because of the likely cost of the urgent application. One of the respondents said he was advised the application would probably cost over R50 000. He asked the trustees to provide invoices or cost estimates for the litigation, but the trustees did not provide any documents.
Judge Norton found that the trustees failed to rebut the claim that the urgent application’s costs would likely exceed the R25 000 cap. The judgment does not say that R25 000 was actually spent. It was the spending limit set by the owners in 2024.
The judge also considered whether this limit could be interpreted as not applying in certain urgent situations. She found that the circumstances did not justify such an interpretation in this case.
Trustees lacked authority to bring urgent application
The trustees argued that the July resolutions could still be presented as binding and that someone might try to implement them before their legality was decided. Judge Norton found that only the trustees had the power to implement the resolutions and they could not be forced to do so without a court order.
The respondents had not tried to take over the trustees’ functions. Instead, a letter from one respondent’s attorneys warned that court proceedings would follow if the trustees refused to implement the resolutions.
The judge concluded that the trustees had acted outside their authority in bringing the urgent application. This meant the Part A application had to be dismissed.
Court leaves validity of resolutions unresolved
Judge Norton also found that the trustees had not met the requirements for an interim interdict. They had not shown enough urgency or a well-grounded fear of irreparable harm.
However, the judge said the trustees had some prospects of success in their separate Part B challenge to the July resolutions’ validity. Stormhaven Park management rules required meeting notices to include the general nature of the business and the proposed wording of resolutions. The agenda for the 6 July meeting did not include the proposed wording of any of the three resolutions. The resolution about the High Court appeal was not even foreshadowed on the agenda while the other two were only broadly mentioned.
Judge Norton therefore accepted that the trustees at least had some prospect of having the resolutions set aside in Part B, but that issue was not finally decided in this judgment.
Trustees ordered to pay costs personally
The final order dismissed the Part A application and ordered that its costs be paid de bonis propriis, meaning personally, by the trustees who held office when the proceedings began. The trustees were made jointly and severally liable, and the costs included counsel’s fees on scale B.
Judge Norton explained that when trustees institute proceedings on behalf of a body corporate without authority, the resulting costs should be paid by the trustees, not the body corporate.
The judgment finally settles the Part A urgent application and its costs. It does not finally declare the July resolutions valid or invalid, nor does it determine the trustees’ separate Part B challenge.
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