It was Captain (rtd.) Nkrabea Effah Dartey, a lawyer of over 30 years standing who first expressed this confusion after Justice Daniel Mensah had decided to adjourn to await the administrative decision of the Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo.
Interestingly enough, the man fighting off the adjournment is one whose name would be called anytime there is talk over the development of law in the country, Tsatsu Tsikata.
The author of the letter is Frank Davies who was representing the Bank of Ghana; the purpose of the letter is to get the case assigned to a new court.
So let me unwrap the case a little for you. In the wake of the consolidation of 5 banks into the Consolidated Bank, shareholders of UniBank one of the 5 unfortunate banks went to court in a bid to overturn the decision of the Bank of Ghana (BoG).
Their case was simple, the Consolidated Bank of Ghana created by the Central Bank to takeover the assets of the five banks is an illegitimate entity.
After filing the suit, the BoG through their lawyers filed an application to strike out the writ of summons and the statement of case of the uniBank shareholders, Dr. Kwabena Duffour and Integrated Properties Limited.
27th of September 2018 had been assigned for the hearing of the application and all parties turned up in court. That was when they first heard of the letter which had been written to the Chief Justice and copied to the Justice Daniel Mensah; I mean lawyers for uniBank shareholders led by Tsatsu Tsikata.
The letter had one aim; to get the CJ to assign the matter to the Commercial High Court because it was more suited to that forum. Justice Daniel Mensah's court is a General Jurisdiction one which meant he could hear anything no matter the subject matter, as long as the CJ saw him fit for the purpose.
As someone who had been following court cases for the greater part of my young reporting career, the strategy seemed new to me but who am I kidding, I am not a lawyer so I listened attentively.
Let me explain why I said, it seemed strange to me. Typically, when a lawyer felt his case had been assigned to the wrong forum, they file a motion raising an objection to being assigned the forum. They would then proceed to move the application to convince the judge as to why, he should not be hearing their case and if successful the Judge would take his hands off the matter and it would be reassigned.
Letters, as far as I can recall are limited to objection to the judge sitting on the matter. Not in this particular case; turns out you can write a letter to get your case reassigned to a different court, a pickle, right?
Having seen the letter, Lawyer Tsikata proceeded to argue that the move was alien to the practice in the courts. He asked the Judge to ignore the letter and go on to hear the application because such correspondence between BoG's lawyers and CJ cannot act as a stay on the matter. He pointed opinion that the Judge that he had not even received an administrative directive from the CJ asking him to suspend the hearing.
Well, Justice Daniel Mensah took a different approach out of the belief that the letter had triggered an administrative procedure that he cannot ignore. He indicated that he takes directives of the CJ and so must out of respect for that authority of the CJ suspend the hearing of the matter to allow the CJ make a decision on the letter.
It was at that point that lawyer Nkrabea Effah-Dartey stood up to make an intervention; his point, he was confused. The procedure was new and he was interested in employing it.
His intervention was however not taken kindly by lawyer Frank Davies, who was happy to have pulled off a masterstroke.
Being confused, I headed straight to the chambers of my friend and brother Elikplim Agbemava who was equally surprised that the judge entertained the letter.
However, it was done and dusted but like lawyer Effah-Dartey said depending on what the CJ does, it would become precedence and perhaps a smarter way of being put to strict proof by your opponent and the Judge whose jurisdiction you are challenging. in other words, a way round.
Until then, like Kripke would say; "this is a pickle."
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