Defendant contends that the Plaintiff having already obtained judgment in its
favour against the Defendant, ought to have sought the execution of the judgment
rather than proceeding to this court. The Defendant therefore characterizes the
present suit as an abuse of the Court processes seeking to invite this court to serve
as an appellate court over decisions of Sierra Leonean Courts. The Defendant says
that amounts to an attack on the judicial comity existing between this Court and
courts of member states.
PLAINTIFF’S ARGUMENT IN RESPONSE
The Plaintiff, before responding to the three prongs argument of the Defendant,
raised an issue to challenge the propriety of the Defendant’s document titled
Affidavit in Support of the Preliminary Objection deposed to by one Osman
Ibrahim Kanu, a Principal State Counsel at the Law Officers Department in the office
of the Attorney General of the Defendant and sworn to before a Commissioner for
Oaths in Freetown on the 24th September, 2018. The Plaintiff’s argument in this
regard is that the said Affidavit in Support of the application for preliminary
objection is defective and alien to the Rules of this Court since it was not deposed
and sworn to before this Honourable Court but under the authority of a different
court in Sierra Leone.
In response to the Defendant’s argument that the present action has been
instituted in breach of Annexure “A” for failing to comply with a condition
precedent which provided for arbitration, the Plaintiff stated that via two letters
dated 20th December, 2011 and 19th January, 2018 which were duly served on the
Attorney General of the Defendant, the Plaintiff requested that an Arbitrator be
appointed for the purpose of having the dispute resolved but the Defendant on
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