Miss Ghana Organisers To Pay Prize To Court

By William Yaw Owusu

Friday, July 28, 2006

Sparrow Productions Limited (SPL) organisers of the Miss Ghana Beauty Pageant was yesterday ordered by an Accra Fast Track High Court to deposit the price among for 2005 10,000 dollars to the courts registry by the close of work yesterday before this year's Miss Ghana final scheduled for tomorrow Saturday can take place.

The court, presided over by Mr Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie, further ordered SPL to transfer all documents covering the prize car (KIA Rio) into the name of Ms Lamisi Mbillah, Miss Ghana 2005.

The order followed an interlocutory injunction filed by Ms Mobillah on July 21 against the SPL and its two top executive, Shirley Frimpong Manso and Jayne Awoonor-Williams, seeking to restrain them from organising this year's beauty pageant because the defendants had failed to fulfil their part of the contractual obligation to her for winning the 2005 crown.

Mr Justice Baffoe-Bonnie ordered that apart from the 10,000 dollars and the documents of the car, the defendants should also deposit the July stipend of one million cedis at the registry, as well as take steps to ensure that Ms Mbillah was furnished with the air line ticket to enable her travel to Poland to compete in the upcoming Miss World beauty pageant.

The court however ruled that should Ms Mbillah lose the substantive case, she will return the KIA Rio in its original form to the SPL

Mr Jusice Baffoe-Bonnie before giving the orders said the court took cognizance of the fact that time, resources and public interest had gone into the preparation of the event.

Weighing all these against the applicantís constitutional right, the Miss Ghana 2006 will go on as scheduled but it is subject to the orders that I have made, he said.

Before the court heard the motion for interlocutory injunction on the event, Dr Raymond Atugubah, Counsel for Ms Mbillah told the court that he had filed a notice at the Court of Appeal to stay proceedings in the matter because the court on July 25 had granted an ex-parte application to abridge the date for hearing to yesterday instead of July 31, as scheduled.

He argued that the court exercised its discretion wrongly in granting the reduction of time because the defendants failed to disclose the nature of damage that they were to suffer if the application was heard on July 31.

But Mr Kwame Akuffo, who represented the defendants said the court was not the proper forum for the plaintiffs application describing it as very disproportionate, unnecessary and an obstacle in the way of justice.

The judge dismissed the application as of no merit and said he would give his reasons later.

Among the reliefsí sought by Ms Mbillah in her substantive motion was a declaration that the prize car is her property and an order compelling SPL to transfer title deeds of the car to her.

She further sought an order to compel SPL to pay to her the prize money of 10,000 dollars with interest to date and another order to compel SPL to furnish her with the prize travel ticket, consisting of an Accra-London-Accra air ticket from Astraeus Airline, and to pay her monthly stipend of ¢1 million for the month of July, in addition to cost.

In her statement of claim, Miss Mbilla said, ìunless the respondents are restrained from organising the Ms Ghana 2006, event they will assume obligations to the prospective Miss Ghana 2006 and not meet it and also assume greater financial commitment and may be unable to meet the current commitment to me.

She said when her reign comes to an end it will be difficult to retrieve from the respondents the entitlements due her as Miss Ghana 2005.