There is a disgraceful situation pending in the Magistracy in Accra where judgement in a two-year-old case was forcibly postponed when the docket of the 24-month proceedings was declared missing.
On June 9, 2014, the Magistrate of the James Town branch, Ms. Grace Gunugu, had fixed judgement for Monday, July 7, 2014.
However, when the plaintiffs and respondents in the civil case and their lawyers turned up in courton the appointed date, the Magistrate, obviously embarrassed, told them the docket to the case was inexplicably missing.
According to a Graphic Online report quoting a source, Ms. Gunugu presented the parties with three scenarios on the way forward: The case could start afresh, the two parties could supply their copies of the proceedings for the case to continue or they could petition the Chief Justice. She adjourned for two weeks for them to reach a consensus on one of the options.
The dispute is over which of two persons – Mr Frank Antwi and the Tagoe Family of Accra – is the rightful person to receive the rent that Mr. Thomas Dettoh is paying for the premises he is occupying?
The Graphic Online report recalled four other docket-missing occurrences, over a four-year period between 2007 and 2011:
* September 5, 2007 – The docket on a case in which a Kumasi Magistrate Court ordered that the employers of a journalist, Mark Bunde, pay his severance package, was reported missing when he applied for a writ to attach his employers’ properties;
* October 22,2007 – The docket of the case in which Charles Quansah was convicted for killing 34 women went missing from the registries of the High Court and the Court of Appeal. His appeal stalled because the docket could not be found. The docket later resurfaced;
* August 16, 2011 – The docket on popular hip-life musician Mzbel who was charged with offences including unauthorised parking, resisting arrest and assault on a police officer went missing; and
* December 20, 2011 – The docket on the controversial cocaine-turned-soda case involving DSP Gifty Tehoda was reported missing.
If dockets are still getting lost after these instances above, The Chronicle thinks that the Ghana Judiciary may not be dispensing all the Justice that is required of it. Whichever of Magistrate Gunugu’s three options is adopted by the parties, what is the guarantee that when the case is due for judgment in 2016 or thereabouts, the docket will not get missing again?
Is there an implied suggestion here that whenever dockets get missing, no member of JUSAG is held responsible for the loss?
Or is it the case that the consideration, the motivation, for making dockets disappear more than compensates for the punishment arising therefrom? The Chronicle, therefore, calls on the Chief Justice to put in place measures to curtail the irksome disappearance of dockets at the critical moments of trials.
How much was spend on the latest case up to July 7, 2014? Are the parties alone going to bear the full cost of re-trial or the state would reimburse them? If it is a crime for an individual to cause financial loss to the state, should it not be a greater crime for the state to cause financial loss to the individual, as the Judiciary has caused the parties in Ms. Gunugu’s court.
What is good for the goose, should equally be good for the gander!
Source: The Chronicle
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