Judgment No. SC 18/18 Civil Appeal No. 137/16 “It was therefore the duty of the learned Judge to have informed plaintiff’s counsel of the relevant point, more especially where that point was, in her view, conclusive of the matter, and to have invited him to submit argument to her. Had she done so counsel would no doubt have been in a position to address her concerns and the necessity for this appeal may well have been obviated. Secondly, the remark made by the learned Judge concerning the alleged arrest of the defendants was not based on any averment made in either the pleadings or the evidence adduced before her at the hearing or in the course of argument by Mr Pretorius. It would appear that she must have gleaned this information from some outside source. It hardly needs stating that a judge may only have regard to the evidence placed before him or her during the course of the hearing and that a reliance on facts not averred in the pleadings or raised in court constitutes a serious misdirection.” (emphasis added) I respectfully agree with the views expressed in the authorities referred to above. The function of a court is to determine the dispute placed before it by the parties through their pleadings, evidence and submissions. The pleadings include the prayers of the parties through which they seek specified orders from the court. This position has become settled in our law. Each party places before the court a prayer he or she wants the court to grant in its favour. The Rules of court require that such an order be specified in the prayer and the draft order. These requirements of procedural law seek to ensure that the court is merely determining issues placed before it by the parties and not going on a frolic of its own. The court must always be seen to be impartial and applying the law to facts presented to it by the parties in determining the parties’ issues. It is only when the issues or the facts are not clear that the court can seek their clarification to enable it to correctly apply the law to those facts in determining the issues placed before it by the parties. The judgment of the court a quo unfortunately fell short of these guiding principles. In seeking to find middle ground, the court a quo granted orders which had not been sought by either party. It granted the first and fourth 13