Kevin Taylor
An Accra High Court has awarded damages of GH¢1 million against a controversial social media commentator, Kelvin Taylor, who is domiciled in the United States of America (USA), for defamatory statements he made against NPP strategist Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko of the Danquah Institute fame.
Kevin Taylor had said Mr. Otchere-Darko was a beneficiary of the Power Distribution Service (PDS) which took over the management of Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) transaction which was incidentally abrogated by President Nana Akufo-Addo, but the court in its judgement said the claim was false.
Kevin Taylor had accused Mr. Otchere-Darko of owning a property in the plushest part of London, Mayfair, with insinuations that the lawyer bought the property with proceeds from PDS or a similar transaction of a questionable nature.
The vociferous social media commentator had also accused the plaintiff of using money from PDS to get drunk on hard liquor although Otchere-Darko insists he is a teetotaler, and has not touched alcohol for 30 years.
In October 2019, Mr. Otchere-Darko sued Taylor for defamation and due to the fact that the defendant resided in the United States, the court presided over Justice Jennifer Abena Dadzie granted an application for Mr. Otchere-Darko to issue a writ of summons and serve notice on Kevin Taylor out of the jurisdiction.
The order of the court specified that the notice of the writ should be served on Kevin Taylor by expedited courier service DHL through his own indicated address. However, the DHL courier service could not serve Kevin Taylor at his own indicated address.
The courier service tried all it could and even called Kevin Taylor on his own indicated telephone number, but he denied being the person on the other end of the line.
It became clear to Gabby and his lawyer, Kissi Agyebeng, that Kevin Taylor was intentionally evading service.
The evasive antics of Kevin Taylor compelled the lawyer to pray the court to vary its earlier order for the notice of the writ against Kevin Taylor to be served out of the jurisdiction.
The court on March 16, 2020 ordered that in the alternative, the notice of the writ be posted on the Facebook wall of Kevin Taylor and also same forwarded to the WhatsApp number of Kevin Taylor.
Kevin Taylor, even upon service of the court processes on him, neither entered appearance nor filed a statement of defence to substantiate the allegations he made against Gabby.
Kevin Taylor then resorted to making disparaging comments on Facebook against an associate of Kissi Agyebeng, who was lawyer for Mr. Otchere-Darko who effected the service of the processes on him.
This conduct of Kevin Taylor clearly showed that he was fully aware of the court processes and proceedings but deliberately failed to show up.
On October 12, 2020, Gabby Otchere-Darko mounted the witness box and gave his evidence.
He then called Samuel Attah-Mensah, the former Vice-President of the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA), as a witness.
The court presided over by Justice Jennifer Dadzie in its judgement found that Kevin Taylor had, without any basis whatsoever, made very serious defamatory comments against Mr. Otchere-Darko.
Although lawyers for the plaintiff did not specify an amount of damages in the writ, the court awarded damages GH¢1 million in favour of the plaintiff due to the seriousness of the defamatory matter published by Kevin Taylor.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak