The nation’s number one event production company Charterhouse have brought a lawsuit for defamation against Ghanaian dancehall artiste and reigning Artiste of the Year at the same company’s annually organised Ghana Music Awards Charles, Nii Armah Mensah Jnr aka Shatta Wale.
The Plaintiffs are seeking the court, inter alia, to award damages of ten million Ghana cedis against the Defendant for what they consider as defamatory statements made against them in some videos he recorded and uploaded to Facebook.
Documents sighted by this website show that the suit numbered APB/2015 and dated 2nd October 2014, which also has as plaintiff the CEO of the company Mr. Iyiola Ayoade, was filed at the Fast Track Division of the High Court in Accra in relation to four separate videos the musician uploaded on social media which they consider as defamatory.
The two plaintiffs, that is Charterhouse and Mr. Ayoade, pray the court to declare that the Dancehall King singer had defamed them with the four separate videos he recorded and uploaded to his Facebook page. According to the writ, two each of the said videos were respectively uploaded on 23rd and 24th September 2014 respectively.
Another relief the Plaintiffs are asking from the court is to order the Defendant to render “an unqualified apology and retraction of each of the four separate videos with the 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 third relief sought by the Plaintiffs is for Shatta Wale to send the four videos in which he renders apologies to the Plaintiffs to “all media houses and online publications that have aired the defamatory videos complained of and ensure that same and/or published at his own expense” within a week of the judgment.
The Plaintiffs again seek the court for an “order of perpetual injunction restraining 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.”
Pending the hearing of the case, as requested by lawyer for the Plaintiffs Egbert Faibille Jnr, on 20th October 2014, the Plaintiffs are praying the court to order an interlocutory injunction on the Defendants from uploading on Facebook or any other social media platform the four videos aforementioned and/or any other similar videos.
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