High Court judge Justice Jacob Mafusire has once again dismissed an application by Petina Gappah who is being sued for US$1 million by a fellow lawyer Fadzayi Mahere for defamation.
Gappah was seeking recusal of the judge on allegations of being biased and having an intimate affair with Mahere.
Mafusire said Gappah had unjustifiably gone personal also accusing her lawyers, Jessie Majome and Tinomudaishe Chinyoka of acting like "hired guns".
To this end, the judge trashed Gappah's application with costs before he ordered her lawyers to show why his judgement should not be copied to the Law Society of Zimbabwe and why they should not bear costs.
"This application has to be dismissed with costs at the highest scale available.
"The applicant's legal practitioners are equally culpable. They have been complicit in the demonisation of the entire judiciary.
"But this sort of thing happens when legal practitioners abdicate their responsibilities as officers of the court and opt to act like hired guns.
"A legal practitioner's first duty is to the court. He or she should have the courage and responsibility to advise their client when their cause is dead."
"The applicant's legal practitioners herein deserve to be censured by an order of costs de bonis propriis (out of one's pocket) on the same high scale.
"The regulatory authority may need to peek into their behaviour. However, since these issues have not come up before, an opportunity is given them to show cause why they should not be reported and mulcted in costs," said the judge.
Mahere sued Gappah for tarnishing her image after she made several allegations, one being that she had assisted her in redrafting her Cambridge essay while rendering additional assistance for her enrollment at Cambridge University.
Gappah said the allegations she made against Mahere were not false, further indicating that she would defend herself in court.
In her plea, Gappah also said she stated the truth when she said Mahere had attempted to start a sexual relationship with the father of her son.
Last year, she had two of her applications dismissed by the High Court before she mounted a Supreme Court appeal which was also thrown out.
Gappah then made the present application accusing the judge of having an affair with Mahere among other things.
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Mafusire said Gappah's founding affidavit was shocking to the extent one would think she had no legal support.
"It is unbelievable that two legal practitioners who are supposed to be officers of the court have presided over and directed the drafting of the founding affidavit," said Mafusire.
"The applicant has irregularly commented extensively and, in the most condescending and disparaging manner, sought to discredit both the evidence yet to be led and the witnesses yet to testify in the main case.
"I am accused of, among many other things, having accepted at face value the respondent's apparent falsehoods and rejected her apparent truths," he said.
Gappah also said Mahere instituted a million-dollar claim for damages in the knowledge and confidence that there were corrupt judges who would fight in her corner.
She said Mahere was a woman of loose morals, interested in older men.
Mafusire said Gappah's application does not meet the requirements for recusal in any respect.
"It is an unmitigated absurdity. It is an affront. No judicial officer can relate to it without impairing the dignity of the court.
"The applicant has unjustifiably gone personal. She has purported to superimpose her misguided issues into the respondent's cause. This is wrong. What is more, it is done in the most derogatory manner. Facts are deliberately twisted," said the judge.
Mafusire said litigants who stray from the norm deserve censure.
