Associate Justice Yamie Quiqui Gbeisay, Presiding in Chambers of the Supreme Court, has rejected a request to step aside from Milad Hage's "fake" land deed case, which has drawn a legal battle between the deceased's widow, Oumou Hage and her biological children on one hand, and Nohad Hage, her step-daughter.
Instead of recusing himself from the legal tussle, Justice Gbeisay on yesterday placed a temporary halt on the case despite repeated requests from Oumou's lawyers, citing "conflict of interest and impartiality."
Gbeisay, while serving as a judge of the Civil Law Court, rendered a decision on the fake deed case, ordering a five-day incarceration of Oumou, at the Monrovia Central Prison, of which Oumou asked for his recusal.
Gbeisay had said that his imprisonment of Oumou resulted when he held her in criminal contempt.
Oumou's imprisonment, according to court documents, was reportedly due to refusal to sign what she then considered as a fake deed that was introduced in the case of her late husband's estate.
Gbeisay's justification is that the incident does not merit his recusal, after which he issued the temporary stay order.
His stay order resulted from a Writ of Certiorari filed by Nohad Hage before the Supreme Court.
She had challenged the Civil Law Court Judge Golda A. Bonah Elliott's judgment that denied her Bill of Information.
Her bill sought Bonah-Elliott's recusal from hearing the case.
Bonah Elliott confirmed that she took part in the Nohad's case, as a practicing lawyer of the Sherman and Sherman law firm, which provided legal services for Ecobank Liberia Limited, a defendant, in one of the Hage's Estate cases that have no relationship with the fake deed lawsuit.
"Gbeisay's alleged refusal to address doubts about his impartiality in the wake of his stay order underlines the weakness of the Supreme Court's current ethical code," a Supreme Court lawyer noted.
To the dismay of advocates for judicial reform, however, the code contained no enforcement provision.
Individual justices are left to their own devices to decide whether or not they should recuse themselves from cases in which there might be an appearance or reality of conflict of interest or impartiality.
