Counsel for Lighthouse Chapel International has pleaded with the Labour court in Accra to give them more time to adequately respond to the six lawsuits filed by six former Pastors of the Church.
In an explosive report by the Fourth Estate, the six former Pastors recounted their alleged abuse, trauma, and exploitation during their time with Lighthouse Chapel.
The Pastors went to court to obtain justice over the non-payment of their SSNIT contributions as mandated by law.
In Court yesterday, it came to light that the Lighthouse Chapel failed to respond to five of the six lawsuits within the time frame directed by the Court.
Counsel for Lighthouse Chapel, Rodney Heward Mills pleaded with the Court to grant them more time to file their appropriate responses, however, counsel for the plaintiffs, Kofi Bentil opposed the plea, calling on the Court to award damages to the tune of GHS2,000.
Because the six former employees had filed their cases separately, each case was called separately. And after three of their cases were heard with the same argument of the defendant asking for more time and the plaintiff hoping for more cost, the trial settled into some monotonous drama.
Eyeing what was happening, Justice Frank Aboagye Rockson joined in the monotony and gave similar rulings, awarding GHc1,000 as cost in all the cases except Larry Odonkor’s and extending the deadline for filing responses to 14 days in all the cases except Larry Odonkor’s.
The exception was because the counsel for LCI had indicated that he had filed a response to Larry Odonkor and so the judge award GHc500 as a cost for the defendant’s inability to file within the stipulated time. The court also gave the plaintiff, Larry Odonkor, 10 days to respond.
Full Story Can be found at TheFourthEstate.
Source: GhanaFeed.Com