Lawyer for former chief justice Gertrude Torkornoo has dismissed claims that his client is “forum shopping” by flooding the courts with multiple cases.

Speaking on The Forum on Asaase Radio on Saturday (20 September) Nii Ayikoi Otoo argued that most of the legal challenges had been initiated by ordinary citizens, not by Justice Torkornoo herself.

“There are people who go about saying that the Chief Justice has so many cases in court and that she is involved in forum shopping. That is not true,” Otoo said.

“In a constitutional interpretation you don’t need yourself to go to court. Any Ghanaian can go to court. In the famous case of Agyei Twum, it was not Acquah who went to court to complain. It was Agyei Twum who went to say that the process used for removing him is flawed,” the former attorney general explained.

According to Otoo, Justice Torkornoo is personally involved in only one case before the Supreme Court.

“In this same case there is only one case in which the Chief Justice was involved. All the rest were not done by the Chief Justice. They were done by individuals who went to court. They should stop saying she has been filing cases at the Supreme Court. She has only one case at the Supreme Court, and they are not even giving a hearing,” he said.

“If they want to be true to themselves, they should set a date and hear such important constitutional matters and rule on them once and for all. Ghanaian citizens have gone to the Supreme Court; you don’t put it around her neck and say she has five cases pending at the Supreme Court,” he said.

Otoo also criticised the handling of her judicial review application.

“Even the first judicial review application she started, they never gave her a date until the Attorney General said it had a preliminary objection. And then when he filed his motion, there was a date for hearing.

And then her own matter—no date had been given. And then they ended up saying the court had no jurisdiction. How can a High Court say it has no jurisdiction over an administrative body?” he asked.

Torkornoo filed a case earlier this month seeking to nullify the president’s action, arguing that the petitions against her addressed only her conduct as Chief Justice and not as a Supreme Court justice.

The application, filed under Articles 23 and 141 of the 1992 Constitution and Order 55 of C.I. 47, seeks to nullify the Warrant of Removal issued by the President on 1 September.

Credit: Asaaseradio