Prominent lawyer Tino Chinyoka has sued a journalist from a state owned publication for US$100 000 for allegedly publishing falsehoods where he claimed a magistrate stopped a lawyer from lying in court.
Chinyoka sued Prosper Dembedza for the story published in The Herald of February 15, 2023 under the headline: Magistrate stops lawyer from lying in court.
The paper has also been sued as the first respondent in the case.
Dembedza claimed Harare magistrate Vongai Guriro reprimanded lawyer Millecent Moyo of Mutumba, Mugabe and Partners for lying that Chinyoka had travelled to South Africa for medical treatment.
Moyo was seeking the postponement of a case where Chinyoka’s client and property developer George Katsiemberis is accused of defrauding Pokugara Properties, a company owned by businessman Ken Sharpe.
The story claimed that Chinyoka rushed to court to do "damage control" after Guriro rejected the request to postpone the case.
Dembeza said Chinyoka failed to show the court any proof that he was unwell or travelling anywhere.
A transcript of the court proceedings signed by Guriro showed that Moyo never said Chinyoka had already left for South Africa.
According to the record, Moyo said he was preparing to leave the country on the same day.
Guriro was insisting on proceeding with the case without Chinyoka, who could not make it to court due to ill health and preparing to travel to South Africa.
Chinyoka was eventually forced to rush to court before travelling the same evening.
The magistrate labelled Moyo unprofessional for allegedly claiming that Chinyoka was already in South Africa.
Moyo was subjected to an investigation by the Law Society of Zimbabwe following widespread coverage of Guriro’s utterances by the media.
She went on to sue Guriro for US$290 000 as damages for “deliberately injuring” her reputation.
Katsimberis also tried to have Guriro recuse herself from the case citing the lawsuit by Moyo, which he said meant that the magistrate will not be impartial after she was sued by one of his lawyers.
Guriro refused to recuse herself after prosecutor Michael Reza, who has also refused to stop handling due to alleged bias, sprang to her defence.
In summons dated January 24, Chinyoka said Dembeza’s article that was accompanied by his picture taken from socal media without his consent dented his reputation.
He said the facts were that he never connived with Moyo to lie, and also that Moyo never lied to the court.
Chinyoka said the article was motivated by a malicious intention to injure his reputation and accused Dembedza of consistently writing biased articles about Katsimberis’ case.
“Wherefore, plaintiff claims against the defendants, jointly and severally, the one paying the others to be absolved a payment of US$50,000.00 (or the Zimbabwe currency equivalent at the RBZ auction/exchange rate) being defamation damages suffered by the plaintiff,” part of the summons read.
“Payment of US$50,000.00 (or the Zimbabwe currency equivalent at the RBZ auction/exchange rate) being damages for injurious falsehood suffered by the plaintiff.”
Chinyoka also want the two to pay interest at the prescribed rate on these sums from date of summons to date of payment.
He is represented by Mutumbwa, Mugabe Legal Practitioners in the case where The Herald is the first respondent and Dembedza the second.
“The defendants, when publishing the article knew that plaintiff is a legal practitioner practising as an advocate, as well as a qualified social worker, law lecturer and father, all of which are directly impacted by any suggestion that he is unprofessional, disreputable, a liar, or is otherwise unfit to be in the roles that he occupies,” the summons say.
“The contents of the article are false and defamatory of our client in that they impute, and were intended by defendants to impute, and were understood by the persons to whom they were published to impute, that our client, though a legal practitioner practising as an advocate, a social worker, law lecturer and a father working with the public, was a liar with no moral fibre and a person unfit to hold the office of a legal practitioner who orchestrated a failed attempt to lie to the court and then had to rush to court to carry out damage control and therefore guilty of such unconscionable and despicable conduct unbecoming of an advocate.”
