New court rules after judge sued by advocate

One of the legally most distressing cases ever to be argued in the courts of Zambia has reached a crucial point: the scandalous matter of a senior advocate suing a High Court judge with allegations that his constitutional rights had been infringed by the judge, has now been considered by the country’s highest court. The Supreme Court has ordered that the matter be properly heard in the High Court, but with the judge no longer named as respondent. This part of the decision followed a reaffirmation by the court of the principle that judges cannot be sued in their personal capacity. But, writes Carmel Rickard in her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site, the three Supreme court judges also used the opportunity to chastise the judge concerned for his behaviour, saying that to call his behaviour ‘unacceptable’ would be an ‘understatement’. And they then went on to change the court rules to prevent such behaviour in the future. The dispute originally started when the judge did not announce a time for handing down his original decision and left counsel waiting, as the client’s costs escalated, until an 11pm delivery.