John Riley has been involved with the legal profession for more than 30 years. His wealth of experience is exhibited by his background in Prosecuting and serving on the bench as a Magistrate (7 years), practicing as an attorney for his own account, assisting as an acting Regional Court Magistrate and acting as a High Court Judge; and acting as commissioner at small claims court. 

When he commenced articles of clerkship at Simon Abel & Son, he soon built up his “own practice” within their practice. After his first year of articles, the partners had offered him partnership in the practice, after completing his articles of clerkship, he however, elected to commence practice on his own account.  He very soon became busy and was forced to appoint a professional assistant. The practice showed good and steady growth and he soon thereafter appointed candidate attorneys. For the last approximately 20 years he has had between 3 – 6 professional assistants in his employ.  He presently conducts the practice, managing a staff compliment of 3 additional attorneys,  3 secretaries, a bookkeeper, receptionist and a general office worker.

The present office premises is a house, which was purchased in April 2003 and refurbished for office purposes.

John Riley practices in all areas of law but regards his speciality in the area of Criminal Law, Civil Litigation, Commercial Law and Constitutional and Administrative Law.  He has over the years established substantial goodwill and respect amongst Judges, Magistrates, Prosecutors, Members of the Side Bar and Bar, the State Attorney’s Office, law enforcements agencies such as SAPS, Correctional Services and the like.

He derives extreme pleasure from the experience of teaching at the Practical Law School [presented by the Association of Law Societies] training candidates for practice and merging the gap between practice and academia. His involvement and commitment to the training of candidate attorneys can be confirmed by Gail Kemp and Mubarak Sulaiman of the Association of Law Society. He has also presented lectures on criminal practice to the candidate attorneys of Edward Nathan Sonnenberg and Bowman Gilfillan.

The Convenor of the Small Claims Court and the organiser of the Small Claims Court (Wynberg) can testify to his past involvement with the Small Claims Court as a Commissioner. 

He has experience as a public prosecutor and later as Control Prosecutor at the Athlone Magistrate’s Court. He also worked as a prosecutor at Wynberg Regional Court. During October / November 2003 and in 2004 he sat as a Regional Court Magistrate at Wynberg Magistrates Court assisting with the backlog of cases in the Regional Court. His time spent in the Western Cape High Court during 2007, 2010 and the period between September 2014 to 2016, as an acting judge has been invaluable.

In the time that he has been in practice he has had the opportunity, and has worked with most of the persons who now hold senior positions in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions as well as the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, the Cape Bar and Law Enforcement authorities.

As a Magistrate at Athlone and at Mitchells Plain he had his first opportunity of getting a different perspective of the application of justice.  His first love is that of litigator and also respectfully views this as his strength. In the course of acting in the capacity of prosecutor, attorney, magistrate and acting judge he has had the opportunity of viewing witnesses and evidence from all perspectives. The experience in this regard has always been to his advantage.  The experience gained from holding these positions has given him a fresh and balanced perspective of the law.

Contrary to popular belief he has never focused exclusively on criminal law and over the years the practice developed into a general practice which specialised in civil litigation in both the lower and higher courts.  The areas of law that he has predominantly focused on are criminal law, constitutional administrative law litigation, civil litigation, personal injury law, and commercial law.   Other areas of law include but are not limited to Matrimonial Law, Child Law, drafting of Commercial Contracts & Trust Deeds.  Since he has always conducted a general law practice, he has gained experience in most spheres of the law.  Consequently, he will do any legal work depending on the needs of the particular client. 

He however accepts that expertise in a particular area of the law can only be acquired by the constant exposure to same.  In practice he has aimed to shed the legacy associated with previously disadvantaged firms by seeking to carve a niche in the corporate sector.  This has however been difficult due to the fact that the big corporates have always preferred to brief the “bigger” law firms.

Most of the administrative staff employed in his practice started off with no experience in law and were trained and empowered to effectively hold their present positions.

The practice has extensive experience and knowledge in the field of personal injury law and previously served on the panel of the Road Accident Fund representing the Fund against claimants for several years.  The firm has provided legal services to the City of Cape Town for several years and in this regard has done a number of matters dealing with complex administrative and constitutional law issues, evictions and matters relating to damages.  The firm has also been retained to do legal work for the University of Western Cape, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and Petro SA. Although he initially worked in association with other legal firms, the practice has for several years had its own conveyancer and notary public.

His involvement in the community has been directed mostly towards creating better conditions for the homeless by being a member, management committee member and executive member of the Haven Night Shelter Organisation.  Although he is no longer an active member he continues to assist with legal matters relating to the Organisation. 

During 2004 he was requested respectively by SARFU (Western Province) to sit as chairperson on their appeals committee relating to Disciplinary matters and he has also acted as chairperson for SAFA (Western Cape) in certain Disciplinary matters. He has also been requested to serve as chairperson in several disciplinary hearings by the City of Cape Town in respect of senior officials.

During 2007, 2010 and from September 2014 to April 2016 he was honoured to serve as an acting judge in the Western Cape High Court.

He has also served as Chairperson on disciplinary tribunals of the erstwhile Law Society of the Cape of Good Hope as and when his services are required.

Due to his experience and background he has have served as Chairperson of Disciplinary hearings at Clovelly Country Club where he is a member. He is also co-opted as a member of Clovelly Country Club and also offers legal advice to the Club. He now serves as a member of the governing body of the Club. He has been honoured to serve as a trustee of the Raymond Ackerman Golf Academy, which focuses on the upliftment of the marginalised and disadvantaged youth in society.

High Court Acting Judge experience:

Apart from the criminal and civil trials that he presided over in the Western Cape High Court he was also required to consider automatic reviews from the magistrates courts which in certain instances required that judgments be written where he was required to determine if the proceedings were in accordance with justice or not.  Part of his duties included being required to consider what is referred to as mental reviews.  He also sat on criminal appeals on Fridays since his first acting appointment.  The lists of criminal appeals are lengthy.

In the civil sphere he has been exposed to motion court on a regular basis since 2010 as illustrated hereunder.

02/02/2010     –           56 matters

04/03/2010     –           75 matters

07/11/2014     –           62 matters

27/01/2015     –           153 matters

30/01/2015     –           73 matters

30/04/2015     –           65 matters

24/08/2015     –           36 matters

26/08/2015     –           53 matters

08/12/2015     –           98 matters

11/12/2015     –           109 matters

26/01/2016     –           113 matters

28/01/2016     –           89 matters

On the days that he was not allocated motion court, he performed “urgent duty” which required that matters are either dealt with in chambers or argued in open court.  The urgent matters dealt with were of a diverse nature.  He commenced doing civil trials from his first appointment in 2007 and has dealt with a variety of matters including but not limited to, RAF trials, a defamation trial, breach of contract and cancellation of a sale of land etc. He has also a done a variety of civil applications which has involved for example, an application for an order reviewing and setting aside the decision of an arbitrator; the review of the taxing masters bill of costs; an application against the Deeds Registrar ordering him to remove a caveat/interdict on a property and declaring that the registration of the said property was not in breach with the title deed of a sectional title scheme, contempt of court applications, urgent application to permit a foreigner into the country; applications to have immovable property declared executable; interpretation of court order, application relating to the interpretation of the meaning of the servitude protecting view (prospectus), applications for provisional sequestration orders, applications for provisional liquidation orders, applications for final sequestration liquidation orders, special pleas in relation to prescription, applications for interdicts against illegal search and seizure by SAPS, applications relating to the interpretation of decisions by municipality to award tenders (PAJA), application for amendments, exceptions, applications relating to the interpretation of the provisions of the NCA, Act 34 of 2005 relating to the indebtedness of Sureties and Guarantors, reckless credit agreements, asylum seeker permits, application for mandament van spolie.

He has also sat on civil appeals from the lower courts. Some of his judgments are reported in the SA Law Reports, the SA Criminal Law Reports and the Butterworths Constitutional Law Reports, e.g., Newlands Surgical Clinic (Pty) Ltd v Adv W. G Burger SC 2014 JDR 2698 (WCC); Van Der Berg v Taxing Master Western Cape High Court Cape Town 2014 JDR 2700; Cinmark (Edms) BPK v Registrateur Van Akte Kaapstad 2015 JDR 0086 (WCC); Chen & Another v Director General Home Affairs & Others [2015] JOL [32651]; Auction Alliance (Pty) Limited and Another v Minister of Police and Others [2015] JOL 32650; S v Ndzola [2015] JDR 0085 (WCC) 2016 (1) SACR 320 WCC; S v Vananda 2016 (1) SACR 592 (WCC), S v Ganga 2016 (1) SACR 600 (WCC); Baartman v Stubbs 2015 JDR 0513 (WCC); Y B v S B & Others NNO 2016 (1) SA 47 (WCC); Hannes Jacobs N.O & Others v  Breede Vallei Munispaliteit WCC Case No. A520/2014 – 24 June 2016.

Rukia Allie is an attorney at Riley Incorporated. She completed her Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of the Western Cape in 2009, majoring in Industrial Psychology. In 2011 she was awarded the LLB degree summa cum laude, at the same institution. Rukia is an enthusiastic problem solver, and her natural affinity for people has stood her in good stead thus far. She has complemented her training at the UCT School for legal Practice with practical exposure to a wide variety of matters including family law, civil and criminal law matters in the lower and high courts.

Dennis Burt Cavernelis was born and educated in Cape Town.  He matriculated at Livingstone High School in Claremont.  He served Articles of Clerkship with Isaac Volkwyn & Co in Cape Town.  He is a Senior Attorney, Notary and Conveyancer.  He specialises in Conveyancing, Notarial work, Trusts and the Administration of Estates.  He was for many years a member of the Panel of Examiners for the Conveyancing examinations conducted by the Cape Law Society.  He was a Senior Partner in the firm of Wilkinson, Van der Ross & Josh in Athlone for over 30 years where he was head of the Property Department.  The said firm subsequently amalgamated with Hofmeyr Herbstein with offices in Sandton and Cape Town and thereafter with Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr.