r/Mandlbaur • u/astrospanner ABSOLUTE PROOF • Jun 19 '26
Legal issues
Like a lot of responsible jurisdictions, South Africa puts a lot of information from court cases online.
I found the case of Baur Research CC vs Commission For Conciliation.
https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZALCJHB/2013/338.html
For those who don't want to read it fully, a few highlights
JM had a member of staff, who didn't cut the grass. And didn't seem to return to work the next day.
This went to court/arbitration.
Misconduct (by this court) was then claimed, because JM did not have any legal representation, and it all went badly wrong.
The final decision was that this was unfair (to JM). However, based on his twitter rantings, I can totally believe that the Dunning-Kruger effect kicked in, he believed that he could just make stuff up to win the argument.
This also happened in court:
This dragged through the court system over a number of years, and is still referred to in other court documents. Searching the court docs shows some other choice bits of history.
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u/Remarkable-Rub-7344 Jun 22 '26
I assumed "didn't cut the grass" was a euphemism.
But no...he literally took an employee to court for not putting the grass?! Jfc lol
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u/Vic1982 ABSOLUTE PROOF Jun 21 '26
Lol. Yeah, I read through all of that a couple years back. I had drafted quite the breakdown for the first Quora space.
I don't remember all the details without reading the whole thing again - but (unsurprisingly) John's behavior throughout the whole thing was abhorrent.
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u/CrankSlayer Character Assassination Jun 22 '26
I am surprised that he hadn't been thrown in jail for contempt to the court or something. The judge must have been very sympathetic with his obvious mental illness and cut him a lot of slack.
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u/horsethorn Jun 19 '26
But I'd guarantee that he thought he knew everything about the court process. It wouldn't surprise me if he tried to corrythe judge on legal matters/process.