- The High Court dismissed an urgent application by a dog owner seeking the return of his pet after surrendering it to the SPCA.
- The court ruled that spoliation law turns on consent at the time possession is handed over, not on a later change of mind.
- Judge Wilson criticised the applicant’s legal representatives for advancing a fundamentally misguided claim
An attempt by John Michael Letang to urgently reclaim his dog from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) Roodepoort has been firmly rejected by the High Court in Johannesburg. The court found that the dog was lawfully surrendered and not unlawfully taken.
The case arose after Bitsy, a dog owned by Letang, was discovered trapped at the bottom of a drain on his Roodepoort property while he was away on holiday in Durban. The dog was found by Eugene Haricharan, a cadet inspector employed by the SPCA, who attended the property on 2 January 2026.
In a stark account, the court described Bitsy as being in a “dreadful state”, noting that the dog was starving, severely dehydrated, infested with ticks and fleas, and suffering from flystrike in his ear. Judge SDJ Wilson explained that flystrike is “a particularly distressing condition” involving tissue deterioration caused by larvae hatching beneath the skin. The court further noted that Bitsy’s arthritis left him physically unable to escape the drain on his own.
Surrender confirmed, then reconsidered
After contacting Letang and informing him of Bitsy’s condition, Haricharan was told that the owner was not in a position to arrange the urgent veterinary treatment the dog required. Haricharan then asked whether Letang wished to surrender the dog to the SPCA, an offer that Letang accepted.
The surrender was confirmed in writing through a WhatsApp message in which Letang stated that he “do hereby surrender Bitsy to SPCA Roodepoort”. Letang’s daughter, who was present at the property, also signed a form confirming that all ownership rights over Bitsy were being relinquished.
Less than an hour later, however, Letang sent a further message seeking to qualify the surrender, asking that he be informed when Bitsy was “ready for collection”. No response followed. Further messages sent the next day also went unanswered.
By 7 January 2026, Letang’s attorneys demanded Bitsy’s return, asserting that the dog had been unlawfully removed. The SPCA refused, stating that Bitsy had been rescued from neglect and surrendered because his owner could not provide the necessary care. Letang then launched an urgent spoliation application, claiming that he had been unlawfully dispossessed of his dog.
Consent defeats spoliation claim
In dismissing the application, Judge Wilson held that the legal foundation of the claim was misconceived. He stressed that spoliation proceedings are narrowly concerned with whether possession was taken unlawfully, not with disputes about ownership or later intentions.
“The only question is whether, at the point Mr Haricharan took control of Bitsy, he did so with Mr Letang’s consent,” the judge said. “Clearly, he did.”
Judge Wilson rejected the argument that Letang’s later message requesting the dog’s return could undo the original consent. Whether the surrender resulted in a permanent loss of ownership was, the judge said, irrelevant to spoliation proceedings and could only be explored in separate litigation.
“Once Mr Letang conceded, as he had to, that he voluntarily placed Bitsy with the SPCA, there could have been no question of the SPCA having unlawfully dispossessed him,” the court held. “For these reasons, the spoliation application must fail.”
Court warns legal representatives
While the SPCA sought attorney and client costs, arguing that the application should never have been brought, Judge Wilson declined to impose a punitive costs order against Letang himself. Instead, he turned his attention to the conduct of Letang’s legal representatives.
“This is not the first time I have been constrained to observe that the legal representatives currently acting for Mr Letang have brought a fundamentally misguided claim before the urgent court,” the judge said, referring to an earlier matter heard in January 2026.
He went further, warning that the errors in the present case were so serious that the representation “fell below the standard that ought reasonably to be expected of a legal practitioner admitted to appear in our courts”.
Although the court stopped short of ordering counsel to pay costs personally, Judge Wilson cautioned that persistently advancing “transparently untenable arguments” could, in future, result in personal cost orders.
The application was dismissed with costs on the ordinary scale, leaving Bitsy in the care of the SPCA.
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