PROPHETIC Healing and Deliverance (PHD) Ministries leader Walter Magaya — who had been facing a messy $500 000 adultery damages suit filed against him by Harare man Denford Mutashu — can now breathe easy after the latter withdrew the claim from the High Court. CHARLES LAITON
Mutashu, through his lawyers Mugiya & Macharaga Law Chambers, filed a notice of withdrawal at the High Court on Friday last week without citing any reasons.
The notice of withdrawal — filed under case number HC6880/14 — read in part: “Take notice that the plaintiff [Mutashu] hereby withdraws its claim in this matter and tenders wasted costs, dated at Harare this 12th day of September 2014.”
Magaya had already denied the adultery charges and filed an exception to the damages claim.
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.
This was after Mutashu had 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 claim, Magaya said Mutashu 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.
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“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”.
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”.
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 for his wife the latest Toyota Mark II version, adding the alleged move had gone to show the continuing adulterous relationship between the two.
