Judgment No. SC 24/18 Civil Appeal No. SC 455/16 are themselves. It is not part of the duty or function of the court to enter upon any enquiry into the case before it other than to adjudicate upon the specific matters in dispute which the parties themselves have raised by their pleadings. Indeed, the court would be acting contrary to its own character and nature if it were to pronounce upon any claim or defence not made by the parties. To do so would be to enter the realm of speculation. … Moreover, in such event, the parties themselves, or at any rate one of them, might well feel aggrieved; for a decision given on a claim or defence not made, or raised by or against a party is equivalent to not hearing him at all and may thus be a denial of justice. The court does not provide its own terms of reference or conduct its own inquiry into the merits of the case but accepts and acts upon the terms of reference which the parties have chosen and specified in their pleadings. In the adversary system of litigation, therefore, it is the parties themselves who set the agenda for the trial by their pleadings and neither party can complain if the agenda is strictly adhered to.” (my emphasis) 25.7 The authors Cilliers AC, Loots C and Nel HC in their text Herbstein and Van Winsen, The Civil Practice of the High Courts of South Africa (5th edn, Juta and Co. Ltd, Cape Town 2009) quote the following passage from Halsbury’s Laws of England, 4th edn (Reissue), Vol 36 para 1 in which the function of pleadings is said to be, “… to give a fair notice of the case which has to be met and to define the issues on which the court will have to adjudicate in order to determine the matters in dispute between the parties. It follows that the pleadings enable the parties to decide in advance of the trial what evidence will be needed. From the pleadings the appropriate method of trial can be determined. They also form a record which will be available if issues are sought to be litigated again. The matters in issue are determined by the state of pleadings at the close if they are not subsequently amended.” (at page 558) 25.8 In Farrell v Secretary of State for Defence (1980) 1 All ER 166 at page 173, Lord Edmund-Davies stated as follows, “It has become fashionable these days to attach decreasing importance to pleadings, and it is beyond doubt that there have been times when an insistence on complete compliance with their technicalities put justice at risk, and indeed, may on occasion have led to its being defeated. But pleadings continue to play an essential part in civil actions, and although there has been … a wide power to permit amendments, circumstances may arise when the grant of permission would work injustice or, at least, necessitate an adjournment which may prove particularly unfortunate in trial with a jury. To shrug off criticism as ‘a mere pleading point’ is therefore bad law and bad practice. For the primary purpose of pleadings remains, and it can still prove of vital importance. That purpose is 12