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Dawn Norton

Capacity: Attorney
First admitted as attorney: 1999
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: White
Date of Birth: December 1964
Qualifications: BA(1985), H.Dip.Edu (1986), BA(Hons)(1990) (Wits), LLB(1998)(Unisa), LLM(2009)(Wits)

Key judgments:

 

Candidate Biography (updated April 2025):

In a career spanning 40 years, seasoned Johannesburg labour law attorney Dawn Norton has seen it all and (almost) done it all.

First: being a teacher. After completing a BA degree at Wits University at the end of 1985, Norton set her sights on teaching. She was particularly interested in teaching English Second Languages to adult speakers of isiXhosa, isiZulu and Afrikaans who had no experience with English.

Many of those would be factory workers who belonged to trade unions working in and around Johannesburg, whom Norton taught as part of the Braamfontein-based NGO, English Literacy Project. Norton worked for 8 years at ELP, including eventually serving as director, and acquiring a BA(honours) in applied linguistics, also from Wits.

Then: as a lawyer. Norton started studying for her LLB law degree through Unisa in 1991, while still working at ELP. In 1996 she began her training as an attorney through articles of clerkship with the progressive law firm Cheadle Thompson & Haysom (CTH), where she cut her teeth in strikes, retrenchments, unfair dismissals, and unionisation. While at CTH, Norton represented both workers and bosses, trade unions and employer organisations, and major entities in both the public and private sectors.

Leveraging her background in teaching plain English, Norton played a crucial role in drafting the regulations to several of the core pieces of labour law legislation, including the Labour Relations Act of 1995, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act of 1997, the Employment Equity Act of 1998, and the Unemployment Insurance Act of 2001.

Norton left CTH in 2005, at the level of senior associate, to join Mkhabela Huntley Attorneys as a director of labour law. She would stay at MHA for the next 20 years, where she has grown her practice to be the leading labour practices in Johannesburg, if not in the entire country. In the process, she has published several research articles in the labour journals, trained 14 candidate attorneys, and acted in wide variety of labour disputes representing a diversity of clients, including blue chip companies, government departments, parastatals, and trade unions.

However, in 2019 Norton and her fellow MHA directors landed into trouble with the Legal Practice Council for failing to implement internal controls to safeguard clients’ money in the MHA trust account. One of the directors had stolen client money in a secret manner over several years, and it was only after the client confronted said director that he disclosed this to the entire board of directors. Members of the board, including Norton, were therefore left with no choice but to plead guilty and accept the sanction of a fine of R100 000 each.

Norton held four stints as an acting judge of the Labour Court: in 2015, 2019, 2023 and 2024. In that period, she has issued numerous judgments, three of which (all from the latter stint) landed in the law reports.

When state airline South African Airways came crashing into R23 billion worth of losses over five years, its shareholder, the Department of Public Enterprises, decided to place it into business rescue – the first parastatal to do so. During the business rescue process, SAA’s staff count of pilots, cabin crew, engineers and other workers was reduced from 4 700 to only 1 000; and those that remained were offered significantly reduced employment conditions – including reduced remuneration, training, and other benefits. The South African Cabin Crew Association (SACCA) and the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (NUMSA) – the largest SAA unions at the time ­–  deemed this an unfair labour practice and referred it to the CCMA.

However, at the CCMA, the dispute was beset with numerous delays, signifying the skirmishes between SAA and the unions. Ultimately, the CCMA ruled in the unions’ favour on several technical grounds, including a lack of jurisdiction, and dismissed SAA’s application to dismiss the dispute on the grounds of unreasonable delay. SAA took the CCMA’s dismissal on review in the Labour Court, where Norton sat as acting judge. After analysing the complex facts and circumstances, Norton held that the CCMA’s ruling in favour of the unions on the jurisdiction point and, on the inability, to dismiss the case for unreasonable delay were material error of law, finding that “legally speaking, the referral [of the dispute to the CCMA]was opportunistic and utterly misconceived”. She set aside the CCMA ruling, with costs in favour of SAA.

Norton’s long career as a teacher, a lawyer and now acting judge are likely to win her plaudits at the JSC interview for permanent judge of the Labour Court. Comments from legal practitioners are often taken seriously by the JSC and, depending on how they go, might eventually tip the scales in her favour. However, with a ‘new’ JSC that came in after the 2024 elections, it’s hard to predict where things will go.