Court Allows Amoateng To Be Sued

Court Allows Eric Amoateng To Be Sued



By Yaw Owusu
Wednesday, 03 May 2006

Eric AmoatengA FAST Track High Court in Accra yesterday granted an application for order of substituted service on the Clerk of Parliament against Mr Eric Amoateng, MP for Nkoranza North.
With this, Mr Amoateng could be served through the Clerk of Parliament with a suit in which an accounting professor in the United States is asking the court to direct Parliament to declare the Nkoranza North seat vacant.
The court, presided over by Mr Justice E.K. Ayebi, granted the exparte application because Mr Amoateng is unavailable to be served personally.
The Nkoranza North MP is currently standing trial in the United States for an alleged drug trafficking offence and Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare has sued the Attorney General and three others to declare the MP’s seat vacant.
The other defendants are the Speaker of Parliament, the Electoral Commissioner and Mr Amoateng himself.
In granting the application, the court said, “there are reasonable grounds that the Clerk of Parliament will know the whereabouts of Hon. Amoateng and it is a fact that he is in a detention facility somewhere in the US.”
The judge, however, said: “In granting this application, I do not accept the submission by counsel that the Clerk of Parliament is the agent of the MP.”
Earlier, Mr Theophilus Adepoju, who held brief for Dr Philip Ebow Bondzi-Simpson, counsel for the plaintifff, had argued that his client did not know which detention facility in the US Amoateng is presently being held, but he has reason to believe that if the processes are served on the Clerk of Parliament such process will come to the attention and knowledge of the MP.
He contended that since the MP sought permission from the Speaker of Parliament through the Clerk, he (the Clerk), will be the best person to draw the MP’s attention to the processes.
“There is a dispensation for the MP and it came about because he sought permission from the Speaker of Parliament through the Clerk,” counsel told the court.
Counsel later told the Times that all the defendants, had been served and they had in turn entered appearances in the matter, albeit, the Electoral Commissioner did so “under protest.”
In the substantive suit, Professor Asare argued that by virtue of Mr Amoateng’s absence beyond the stipulated 15 days under the law, no dispensation could be granted him or any other person who absented himself/herself from the house without reasonable explanation.
He said that if the court did not grant the reliefs set out in his writ, the defendants “would consciously and unintentionally be acting in breach of the unambiguous dictates of the constitution.”