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Noseweek Editor Martin Welz and his publishing company, Chaucer Publications, have been ordered to pay R330,000 in damages to attorney Leonard Katz for the publication of articles and a front cover alleging he was the “man who stole justice”.
The articles related to allegations by Ian Brakspear, a Durban North businessman. Brakspear claimed that Katz, a director of Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs (ENS) who was representing Nedprop, had through “fraudulent schemes” swindled him out of his family’s Cape wine farm through a “fraudulent” liquidation process.
Brakspear’s claims were tested in a lengthy trial before Judge Frans Kgomo who ruled in 2014 that he was “unbalanced and irrational” and cleared banks and lawyers he had implicated of any wrongdoing.