HON. DR. DOMINIC AKURITINGA AYINE v. EVRON HUGHES

BARTELS-KODWO (JA): -

INTRODUCTION

This is an appeal from the decision of the High Court, Accra dated 17th June 2019 which decision dismissed the Plaintiff/Appellant’s (hereinafter called ‚the Appellant‛) action brought against the Defendant/Respondent (hereinafter called‚the Respondent‛). BACKGROUND The Appellant, a politician, Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga East, former Deputy Minister of Justice, a former lecturer at the School of Law at the University of Ghana and Managing Partner at Ayine & Felli, brought the instant action against the Defendant alleging defamation by the Defendant.

By a writ of summons and accompanying statement of claim, the Appellant sued the Respondent seeking the reliefs reproduced verbatim below;

i. A declaration that the publications pleaded at paragraphs 9 to 11 of the statement of claim to the effect that the Plaintiff is corrupt, a thief and fraudulent are defamatory to the Plaintiff.

ii. General damages for libel against Defendant for publishing the aforesaid words of and concurring in Plaintiff in his facebook posts.

iii. An order of the Honourable Court directed at the Defendants to publish a retraction and an apology with the same prominence as the defamatory words in the Facebook posts.

iv. An injunction restraining the defendants whether by themselves, their servants, or agents or otherwise from authorizing permitting and/or causing to be published the same or similar words defamatory of the plaintiff.

v. Costs including lawyer’s fees.

In his statement of claim the Appellant alleged that on the 21st of December 2015, the Defendant published a Facebook post under the caption ‚Re: Ameri Transaction‛ in which ‚the Defendant stated “I aver that I have reasons to believe that the Amerideal was cooked with the ingredients of deceit and theft with the primary intention to defraud the state””. The Appellant also stated that the Respondent made the following statements ‚it is my assertion that the initiation, structuring and execution of the deal were calculated to give effect to a fraudulent conspiracy involving hundreds of millions of Dollars.

Simply put, it is my assertion that some people decided to steal from the Republic and created the Ameri deal as the turbine to power this grand theft.

They sat down (or stood somewhere), discussed their intention to steal, planned how to steal it, and put it into effect. ‛The Appellant also stated that the Respondent further posted that the Appellant was involved in the