PROPHETIC Healing and Deliverance (PHD) Ministries leader Walter Magaya has filed an exception to the $500 000 adultery damages claim filed against him by jilted Harare man Denford Mutashu.
CHARLES LAITON
Through his lawyer Advocate Thabani Mpofu, Magaya urged the court to punish Mutashu’s lawyers for failing to provide details of how the alleged adultery offence was committed.
Mutashu last week, issued summons against the man of the cloth, accusing him of having an adulterous affair with his wife Nomsa Mutashu (nee Ruvazhe), after the latter allegedly visited Magaya’s church seeking deliverance.
In his response to the $500 000 adultery damages claim filed under case number HC6880/14, Magaya said Mutashu’s claim did not disclose any adultery action recognisable at law.
“More particularly in that, whilst making a claim for adultery damages, plaintiff (Mutashu) does not allege, plead or place reliance upon any real or alleged sexual encounter between defendant (Magaya) and his wife,” Mpofu said.
“No date and place of any sexual encounter has been set out as is required by law and, generally no particulars such as would support the commission of adultery have been set out or relied upon in the entire declaration.”
Mpofu further said the claim, therefore was “consequently set in vacuo [in a vacuum], incompetent and devoid of any recognised legal basis”.
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He also said in the alternative, they were applying to strike out Mutashu’s declaration on the grounds that it “did not constitute a pleading, it seeks to tell a story. It contains evidence, which evidence is at any rate speculative and was irrelevant, superfluous, verbose and unnecessarily argumentative”.
Mpofu urged the court to uphold his application and issue an order for the costs to be on the higher scale of legal practitioner and own client.
“Such costs to be borne by plaintiff’s legal practitioner debonis propriis [out of his own pocket], an order directing plaintiff’s legal practitioner to refund plaintiff of all the fees he has charged in connection with this matter with such refund being made through the Registrar of the High Court of Zimbabwe.”
Mutashu in his summons claimed that the adultery issue had seriously affected his personal health to the extent that at one point he was hospitalised due to excessive stress.
Mutashu also accused the cleric of importing his wife the latest version of Toyota Mark II, adding the alleged move had gone to show the continued adulterous relationship between the two.
“The defendant (Magaya) did not deny that. Instead, he met the plaintiff (Mutashu) in one of the meetings to try and resolve the issue. The plaintiff was so disturbed by the affair between his wife and the defendant to the extent that he had to be bedridden due to excessive stress,” Mutashu’s lawyers wrote in the summons.
“The plaintiff is still going through traumatic moments following the realisation that his wife has been going out with the defendant who took advantage of his ‘spiritual supremacy’ over the vulnerable plaintiff’s wife who was lured to the extent of staying for three days in the defendant’s lodge without letting the plaintiff aware of where his wife was.”
