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General News of Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Source: dailyguidenetwork.com
2019-03-20
Johnson Asiedu Nketia and Professor Dua Agyeman
A high court in Accra dismissed another request from the secretary general of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) opposition, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, seeking to quash the 20 million GH ¢ defamation suit filed against against him by the chairman of the board of the audit department, Prof. Dua Agyeman.
The request was to quash Professor Dua Agyeman's amended statement, but as Mr. Asiedu Nketia's lawyer had not followed the court's orders, it had been rejected.
His attorney, Johnson Normesinu, who had seized Judge Sophia R. Bernasko-Essah, had stated that he was invoking the inherent jurisdiction of the court because the plaintiff's amended writ did not contain any substantive evidence.
According to him, the court order requesting the plaintiff to amend his statement to include the exact word denounced as defamatory in the Twi dialect was specific and did not include anything else.
He contends that the plaintiff had modified one of the reliefs requested to include an increase in the compensation claimed from 15 million GH ¢ to 20 million GH ¢.
According to Mr. Normesinu, this was not part of the court's decision.
He added that the plaintiff, in his amended statement, did not include any addendum stating that it had been amended as a result of a court order.
Gary Nimako, the plaintiff's attorney, objected to this argument by baderting that the motion was only one of the tactics adopted by the defendant to avoid presenting his defense in l & # 39; species.
According to him, an amended writ is a new case in itself and the court can not be asked to dismiss an amended brief because some of the amendments were not specifically ordered by the court.
He described the defense attorney's request as an abuse of judicial proceedings, which shows that the NDC secretary has a file to resolve.
In the decision, the presiding judge stated that although the plaintiff did not comply with the exact orders of the court to amend his statement, it could not be so.
According to her, the plaintiff had the right to change his statement, even without leave of the court, after the closing arguments.
She concluded that there was no document indicating that the applicant had already modified his pleadings; it was time to change the statement as it was done.
She found, however, that the Applicant had not followed the court order because the amended statement of claim should have indicated that the amendment had been made in accordance with the court orders.
She therefore ordered the plaintiff to amend his pleadings to reflect court orders and to file them within 10 days.
The court also sentenced Asiedu Nketia to 600 ¢ GH.
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