CHAMISA HIT WITH $3,2M LEGAL BILL

MDC leader, Nelson Chamisa’ has been hit with a $3,2 million bill after he lost his Constitutional Court challenge against President Mnangag...

MDC leader, Nelson Chamisa’ has been hit with a $3,2 million bill after he lost his Constitutional Court challenge against President Mnangagwa's win.

Dube, Manikai and Hwacha Legal Practitioners, the instructing firm to President Mnangagwa’s legal team, have invoiced Chamisa’s lawyers a bill of around $3,2 million.

That figure excludes costs for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and Mr Elton Mangoma’s lawyers.

Canaan Dube of Dube, Manikai and Hwacha legal practitioners, who was the instructing counsel to President Mnangagwa’s legal team, told The Sunday Mail that a response is yet to come from Chamisa’s lawyers.

“When you go to court and a judgement is delivered; if you are successful, you are entitled to recover your costs.

“What you recover depends on the attitude of the losing party. The party that is granted the costs bills the losing party and if they both agree, the bills are paid. If the parties fail to agree, we go through a process that is called taxation, which is led by the courts taxing master who looks at the bill item by item and then decides whether the bill is fair or not.

“We wrote to them sometime last week or the week before that and we haven’t heard from them since then. Obviously, we cannot discuss these matters in the Press as they are confidential and it may jeopardise the whole process.

“The negotiations are a process and not an event and sometimes the communication can come through a phone call, so we don’t know when they will respond.”

He said they have ensured that their bill is fair, just and reasonable. He however said the law and the rules of the courts do not prescribe a period during which the bills must be settled.

MDC-Alliance secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora said his boss will invoke the process of taxation of costs.

“We were advised that they have billed us for the costs as ordered by the court,” said Mr Mwonzora. In our view, the bill is extremely excessive, not bonafide and grossly exaggerated and our lawyers are going to contest it.

“We are told that they have billed us a figure of around US$3, 2 million. There is a process called taxation where if we fail to agree on the bill, the court will have to go through the bill and determine what is fair.

“The bill we have at the moment is grossly malicious.”