WHEN ‘URGENT’ DOES NOT MEAN ‘TOMORROW’: THE REAL COST OF URGENT HIGH COURT APPLICATIONS

For many people, the phrase urgent High Court application sounds simple: there is a crisis, lawyers rush to court, and a judge hears the matter immediately.

The reality is very different.

In South Africa, urgent applications are governed by Rule 6(12) of the Uniform Rules of Court. That rule allows the High Court to shorten the usual time periods and relax ordinary procedures, but only where a matter is truly urgent and where waiting for the normal court process would leave a person without proper relief. In plain terms, the court must be convinced that the issue cannot wait. 

A useful way to understand this is to compare urgent court with ordinary court.

In an ordinary court application, the process usually unfolds over a longer period. The party starting the case prepares the application, the other side is given time to respond, further papers may be exchanged, and the matter is then enrolled in the normal course. This process allows more time for consultation, gathering documents, legal research and preparation. It is slower, but it is often more predictable and less pressurised.

An urgent court application, by contrast, compresses that process dramatically. The same basic legal work still has to be done — papers must be drafted, facts must be proved, legal arguments must be prepared and the other side must still be given a fair opportunity to respond — but all of this happens in a much shorter period. The court may relax the usual rules about forms, service and time periods, but it does not abandon fairness. That is why urgent litigation is often intense, demanding and costly.

That is where many people misunderstand urgent litigation. A matter may feel urgent emotionally, financially or commercially, but that does not automatically make it legally urgent. The court expects proper reasons. It wants to know: What harm will happen if the matter is not heard quickly? Why can this not be dealt with in the ordinary course? Why did the applicant not act sooner? If urgency is self-created through delay, the court may refuse to hear the matter as urgent at all. 

There is another common misconception: that “urgent” means being in court the next day. That is often not how the urgent court works in practice. Current Gauteng urgent-court directives show that matters are commonly managed through a Tuesday roll-call and allocation process – where an urgent application may be instituted today and enrolled for hearing on the Tuesday two weeks later. Even then, an allocation is not a finding that the matter is urgent. Recent directives also require strict filing discipline, including practice notes, properly indexed and paginated bundles, and heads of argument by fixed deadlines in opposed matters. 

So, while urgent litigation moves faster than ordinary litigation, it is often not “instant justice.” In practical terms, especially in Gauteng, it can mean an intense period of one to two weeks of nonstop preparation, depending on when the application is launched, what the directive says, and how the roll is allocated. That creates enormous pressure on everyone involved. 

For the applicant, the pressure starts immediately. Papers must be drafted at speed. Evidence must be gathered quickly. Consultations happen under tight deadlines. Counsel must be briefed and prepared in a short time. For the respondent, the pressure can be even more severe. They may suddenly receive a large volume of legal papers, be required to find their legal team, answer serious allegations, gather supporting documents and prepare for argument — all in a matter of days. 

This is also why urgent applications can become expensive.

The cost is not just about going to court. It is about the speed at which everything must happen. Urgent drafting, after-hours consultations, late-night preparation, compiling electronic bundles, preparing heads of argument, and getting counsel ready on short notice all increase the amount of work that must be done in a compressed time. Importantly, these costs are not only felt by the person who starts the urgent application. A respondent defending urgent proceedings may also be forced into significant legal expense simply to respond properly and protect their rights. 

Urgent applications are therefore powerful, but they should never be approached lightly. They are essential in the right case — for example, where property is at risk, rights are about to be violated, or delay would make the court’s eventual order meaningless. But they are demanding, high-pressure and costly for both sides. 

The real lesson for clients is this: in urgent litigation, speed matters, but strategy matters just as much. Acting quickly is important. Acting correctly is critical.