Gaetsaloe vs Debswana: the game gets dirty

BAME PIET
Staff Writer | Wednesday September 1, 2010 00:00

According to a legal notice published in yesterday's edition of Mmegi, Gaetsaloe's vehicles are to be auctioned on September 17.

However, his attorney Itumeleng Segopolo says he does not know why Debswana lawyers decided to go ahead with publication of the notice after a meeting on August 19, at which a debt settlement agreement was reached by the lawyers of the two parties.

Segopolo says that they learned of Debswana lawyers attaching Gaetsaloe's property on August 18. The attachment emanates from a court order in favour of Debswana on prescription and exception in the amount of approximately P50,000.

Segopolo says they are yet to decide on whether the payment of costs for prescription should be done at this stage or after the January outcome of the Court of Appeal when all matters relating to it will be determined.

He charges that Debswana lawyers were in haste to publish the legal notice even though they knew their money was on the way. 'We have their cheque right now and the payment will be done before end of today's business,' he says.

An attorney at Collins Newman, who is handling the case, Dineo Makati-Mpho, could not be reached for comment by late afternoon yesterday as she was said to be in a meeting. Her mobile phone was on voicemail.

The two parties are engaged in a legal battle over unpaid dues which Gaetsaloe says were for acting in different positions and unpaid overtime before he left the employment of Debswana in 2004.

He instituted legal proceedings against his employer in 2005. In 2008, the court made a ruling that the claim had prescribed. Gaetsaloe subsequently challenged the ruling at the Court of Appeal where he lost with costs.

Gaetsaloe also challenged another ruling in which the High Court said it was satisfied with Debswana's reasons for defending the lawsuit. He again lost the case and took it to the Court of Appeal, arguing that the three judges were biased in favour of Debswana, hence the application for their recusal.

They refused to recuse themselves and he took the matter further with their colleagues in the July session of the Court of Appeal. Three different judges presided over the matter and agreed that a panel of five judges would decide on whether the court could order their colleagues to recuse themselves in January 2011.