Lawyer Mabirizi to pay shs300m after losing court case

Last year, the Attorney General took Male Mabirizi to court when he made comments on social media challenging the Capital Markets Authority’s approval of MTN Uganda’s Initial Public Offering (IPO).

According to the Attorney General, Mabirizi used his Facebook account and argued out the validity of the suit and said he wanted the rule to be in his favour by the trial judge.

In Justice Musa Ssekaana ruling today, he said that Mabirizi behaved in a manner described as contempt of court and warned him against any more attacks against judicial officers.

Mabirizi’s statements, where he said that the ruling was not valid or had no legal effect, according to Justice Ssekana, tended to lower the authority of Justice Odoki along with the High Court.

“Respondent’s statements wanted to undermine the confidence of the public in whether the judges’ decisions of Justice Odoki and the High Court or judiciary can be relied on as valid and genuine,” Justice Ssekaana said.

“Mabirizi’s statements also tended to negatively affect the administration of justice by undermining the confidence of the public in the rulings of the judge,” Ssekaana added.

According to the judge, the court cannot be attacked by the likes of Mabirizi. When such attacks do happen, the courts usually keep quiet. However, this time, something had to be done to put an end to such attacks.

“Such attacks on the judicial officers should be condemned in the strongest terms since they have become endangered species by social media and usually cannot defend themselves against such attacks.”

Justice Ssekaana therefore said that lawyer Mabirizi should cough up shs 300 million as a fine and compensation to the court.

“This application has succeeded and the court grants an order that the respondent (Mabirizi) pay a fine of shs300 million,” Ssekaana said.