Crime & Punishment of Tuesday, 9 December 2014

Source: GNA

Charter House ordered to amend name

The Fast Track High Court has ordered Charter House Ghana to amend its name to Charter House Production Limited per the company registration at the Registrar General’s Department.

The court, presided over by Justice K. A. Ofori-Atta, gave the order after Mr Peter Zwennes, Counsel for Charles Nii Amarli Mensah, aka Shatta Wale, told the court that a check at the Department revealed that the name of the first plaintiff on the company certificate was different from that on the docket.

He said in view of this it was wrong for the first plaintiff to sue the accused person in court.

Mr Egbert Faibille, Counsel for Charter House Ghana, obliged to the amendment and said it would do so at the next adjourned date.

Charter House and Mr Iyoila Ayoade had gone to court in relation to four separate videos they alleged were defamatory and uploaded on social media platforms by Shatta Wale.

On October 20, this year, the court prevented Shatta Wale from repeating four videos in relation to Charter House Ghana.

The court further restrained him from making new videos and posting on his Facebook page concerning Charter House and its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ayoade.

This followed the granting of an interlocutory injunction filed by Charter House and its CEO in the court presided over by Justice Naa Adoley Azu.

The two plaintiffs were praying the court to declare that the dance hall king had defamed them with the four separate videos he recorded and uploaded to his Facebook page.

According to the plaintiffs, two of the said videos were uploaded on September 23 and September 24.

The plaintiffs are also praying the court to order Shatta Wale to render “an unqualified apology and retraction of each of the four separate videos with approval by the plaintiffs prior to the recording and uploading,” to his Facebook page and to remain on his page for one month within a week of the judgment.

The plaintiffs again sought the court for an order of perpetual injunction retraining the defendant, his agents, hirelings, manager(s), privies and assigns or any person through him and howsoever described from making and/or repeating the defamatory statements or similar statements in the nature of the ones complained in the video recordings.

The plaintiffs are also demanding that Shatta Wale rendered apology in respect of the four videos to all media houses and online media that he aired the defamatory videos complained of and ensure that same and/or published at his own expense.

Shatta Wale was represented by his manager, Lawrence Hanson, and his father, Mr Charles Mensah Senior.

The case was adjourned to January, 2015.