Friday, July 15, 2016

WIDOWER’S SUIT AGAINST MADINA POLYCLINIC IN LIMBO

Five months after initiating legal action against the Madina Polyclinic and four others over the death of his expectant wife and unborn baby, the case is yet to progress beyond the filing of defence by the Attorney General.

Though the Attorney General (AG) filed a defence statement on behalf of all four defendants including the Polyclinic, Ministry of Health MoH) and the Ghana Health Service (GHS) as far back as Thursday March 3, 2016, it was not until Bernard Otu, the plaintiff walked into the registry on Thursday July 7, 2016 that he was given the defense statement after five months of initiating the action. 

According to legal experts, the statement ideally was supposed to have been served the counsel for plaintiff and or his client immediately it was filed, but this was not the case, and no official reason has been assigned for the apparent delay.

Follow up
On Friday June 24, 2016, The Mirror which broke the story wrote in a letter to the Registrar of the Human Rights High Court, enquiring about the status of the case.
In response, the Registrar of the court, Mr. Stephen Afotey confirmed (in a letter dated July 5, 2016) that the defense statement was filed five months ago.

“A search conducted in the registry indicates that on the 3rd day of March 2016, the Attorney General filed statement of defence for all the defendants herein”, part of the one paged letter of response read. The letter, however, fell short of explaining why the document was still gathering dust at the registry.

It cost the Mirror GHC 50 to get the response, which the court registry said was because the newspaper was not party to the case.

Plaintiff’s demand for the statement
The plaintiff, Mr. Bernard Otu displaying the statement of defence
On Friday July 8, 2016, Mr Otu, the plaintiff made a personal appearance at the Court’s registry to enquire about and demand a copy of the statement. It was only then that he was handed a copy, which he later delivered to his counsel, Francis Xavier Sosu Esq. of the F-X Law and Associates.

Interview with Counsel
When asked if the action and or inaction of the court (registry) was delaying the process, Mr. Sosu answered in the affirmative. “Those Clerks are derailing the course of justice for the poor man”, he stressed and added that “the statement should have been served the plaintiff as soon as it was filed”.
 The way forward
As counsel for plaintiff, Mr Sosu said he was going to file a reply to the statement of defence by Monday July 18, 2016 and would additionally file for direction of the Court which will help set the issues down for trial possibly after the legal vacation which runs from July 31 to October 2016.
Background to the story
Eight months after the death of the pregnant wife, the widower, Mr. Otu initiated a GHC 5 million suit against the Polyclinic and three others- GHS, MoH and the AG- for what he considers an act of “medical malpractice” which caused the untimely death of his 38-year-old wife, Cynthia Nuworsu and their unborn baby girl.

Cynthia, a trader by profession was off to give birth to her fifth child when she died of a ruptured uterus and breeched presentation, as confirmed by an autopsy report from the Police Hospital.

She died around midday on June 18, 2016 following an induction of labour the day before.
Characteristic of him, Francis Xavier Sosu, a Human Rights and Public Interest Lawyer took up the case on behalf of the widower in a determined effort to win the latter a compensation package and to ultimately cause a change in the supervision and overall improvement in the health delivery systems.

The case is presently before the Human Rights division of the High Court in Accra.


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