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JUDGMENT
FRANKLINA GESILA ADANU, J.A:
1.0 General Overview
This is an appeal of the High Court judgment delivered on 13/10/2022. The protection of reputation lies at the heart of the tort of defamation. Warren Buffett stated in his testimony before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance on 4 September 1991 in Washington, D.C., that: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” Nonetheless, to forestall abuse and to mitigate defamation suits while still recognising the rights of a defamed person to seek damages in compensation, the essential thresholds must necessarily be met by every prospective plaintiff.
2.1 Plaintiff/Respondent Case (“Respondent”)
By an amended Writ of Summons and Statement of Claim filed on 16/07/2019, the Respondent stated that he is a medical doctor by profession, Minister for Education and the Member of Parliament for Manhyia South Constituency in the Ashanti Region of the Republic of Ghana. The Appellant is a lawyer by profession and the Communications Officer for the National Democratic Congress (NDC). The Respondent assert that in both public and private life, he has, by dint of hard work, earned himself an admirable reputation as a competent, diligent and principled individual and a responsible citizen. On several occasions, he has been recognised for his hard work, the most recent being a 2019 poll conducted by the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana dubbed, “Assessment of the 275 Members of Parliament (MPs) – Perspective from the Constituents”, which said poll declared him the best performing Minister of the Republic of Ghana. The Respondent further averred that he has participated in many conferences and seminars both in Ghana and abroad and has gained the respect and admiration of his contemporaries and colleagues both in Ghana and abroad.
According to the Respondent, at a press conference addressed by the Appellant on 13/06/2019, the Appellant read out and distributed to the members of the press, a Press Statement which sought to associate the Respondent with one Seidu Yakubu Mba, a suspect in the high-profile and infamous kidnapping case involving two Canadian students who were on an exchange programme in Ghana, sometime in June 2019. The Respondent said at paragraph 14 of his amended Statement of Claim that at the said Press Conference and in the said Press Statement, the Appellant categorically referred to Seidu Yakubu Mba as the ringleader of a synd