Delictual Liability for Disturbing the Airwaves – The Law of Delict Moving into the 21st Century. Ebotswana (Pty) Ltd v Sentech (Pty) Ltd

Abstract

In the context of the delictual remedy for pure economic loss our courts experienced difficulties in determining whether the defendant’s conduct had been wrongful or unlawful. This was to be expected, seeing that a too lenient approach could lead to an unmanageable situation where each and every act or omission causing factual harm to another could entail civil liability, thus raising the spectre of the opening of the floodgates of litigation. It was eventually realised that policy considerations play a crucial role in deciding whether compensation will be granted in any particular case, but the difficulty lay in assigning such policy decision to its correct niche or, stated slightly differently, to the correct “element” of delict.

Keywords: delict, pure economic loss, wrongfulness, unlawfulness