After the Supreme Court of Liberia ruled on April 23, granting embattled Speaker J. Fonati Koffa’s amended bill of information, the House of Representatives Majority Bloc leadership headed by Representative Richard Nagbe Koon on Friday, April 26, 2025, filed a petition for re-argument before the full Bench of the Supreme Court.
In Koon’s 29-count petition, he requested the Full Bench to re-docket the Bill of Information proceeding and conduct a new hearing in the matter.
His lawyers cited Rule IX, Part 1 of the Supreme Court Rules which provides that for good cause shown to the Supreme Court by petition, a re-argument of a cause may be allowed once when some palpable substantial mistake is made by inadvertently overlooking some facts or point of law.
According to Koon’s petition for re-argument, the amended Bill of Information proceedings overlooked and did not consider certain facts and committed some palpable substantial mistakes of law.
Koon said had these facts been taken into consideration and hadn’t these palpable mistakes of law made, the Honorable Court would not have rendered the Judgment: “… any sitting or action of the ‘Majority Bloc’ (respondents) to the exclusion of Speaker J. Fonati Koffa, the duly elected presiding Officer of the House of Representatives, while he is present and available to preside is unconstitutional and without the pale of the law”, And Petitioners say that for these reasons, a re-argument of the Bill of Information proceeding should be allowed so that these facts and laws may be taken into consideration.
The Majority bloc further accused the High Court of wrongfully failing to take into account the undisputed fact that when in August, 2024 Petitioners attempted to use the hall at which Plenary of the House of Representatives regularly sat, it was some of the respondents, especially Hon. Marvin Cole, who locked the entrance to that door and used thugs to force the majority bloc to use the Joint Chambers of the Legislature to decide how to proceed with the management of the complaint filed against Hon. J. Fonati Koffa by some of the lawmakers (Informants), accusing him of corruption, conflict of interest and mismanagement of the affairs of the House of Representatives, which are in violation of Article 90 of the Constitution and Rules 44 and 45 of the Standing Rules of the House of Representatives.
According to Koon’s petition, this is why when Koffa prayed for the Writ of Prohibition at first, asked the Chamber Justice to restrain and prohibit the majority bloc, from holding meetings in the Joint Chambers to decide how to manage the complaint against Hon. Koffa, the Chamber Justice refused to issue the Alternative Writ, as the power to remove Hon. Koffa from the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives is a power vested in the House of Representatives and can be done by a Resolution of two-thirds (%) of the members of the House of Representatives.
The Majority bloc through their legal counsellors H. Varney Sherman and Albert Sim said, said the Justices didn’t acknowledge the undisputed fact and law when considering and passing on the Bill of Information proceeding.
“Your Honors also inadvertently found that there were parallel meetings of the House of Representatives even though Respondents herein, as Petitioners therein, conceded in the matter entitled IN RE: THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF SEVERAL ACTIONS TAKEN BY CERTAIN MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES” (hereinafter the “Constitutionality Case”). out of which the Information proceeding grows, that Speaker Koffa never convened any sitting or meeting of the House of Representatives as he was unable to obtain a quorum (minimum 37 of the 73 members of the House of Representatives) because the majority of the members of the House of Representatives (Respondent in the aforesaid Constitutionality matter, also as Petitioners herein) had resolved that they will not sit under the gavel of Hon. Koffa until the complaint against him was investigated and he was exonerated from the offenses complained off,” the lawyers said.
Complaining further, Cllrs. Sherman and Sims submitted that it is elementary that an accused person shall not preside over a proceeding to investigate accusations against him/her, adding that, “had Your Honors considered this basic fact of this matter, Your Honors would not have ruled in the Information proceeding as Your Honors did.”
Majority Bloc’s lawyers assumed that the justices also ignored the fact that official transaction of the business of the House of Representatives did not resume until after Hon. Thomas Fallah, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, joined them (as Respondent in the Constitutionality case) and, he being the Acting Speaker of the House of Representatives while Hon. Koffa was away from Liberia, chaired the assembly of the majority bloc (Respondents in the Constitutionality Case) and the first substantive agenda item was the reading of the complaint against Hon. Koffa and the order for an investigation to be conducted into that complaint.
Again, Koon submitted that the Chief Justice Sie-A-Nyene G. Yuoh along with three other justices inadvertently erred by finding that parallel meetings of the House of Representatives were being conducted when Hon. Koffa had no quorum to conduct any meeting or sitting of the House of Representatives.
Also, Sherman and Sims said the Justices inadvertently erred by holding that there is an official chamber of the House of Representatives for the transaction of the business of the House of Representatives, as the requirement of law is that both Houses of the Legislature shall convene in Monrovia, the Capital of the Republic of Liberia.
They relied the Legislative Law, Section 3. which provides that, “There is no law or rule of the House of Representatives, which designates a building or room at which the House of Representatives shall meet; and as a matter of fact, during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the House of Representatives regularly met in the Joint Chambers of the Legislature in order to have sufficient space between its members when convened.”
Based on this, the lawyers said that the four Justices inadvertently erred by assuming that by the meeting of the majority bloc in a certain room at the House of Representatives, other than the room designated by the court as the regular chambers of the House of Representatives, it is the majority bloc who had ousted Koffa from the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives without cause and without due process.
According to Koon’s lawyers the House of Representatives is its members, not the building in which they convene; and at whatever place a quorum of the House of Representatives meet, there where the House of Representatives legally is and can transact the business of the House of Representatives.
The lawyers said the Justices again erred by assuming that Koffa, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, was not at a meeting or sitting of the House of Representatives, then the convening of said meeting or sitting, even though the Deputy Speaker was present and presiding, is unconstitutional, null and void.
They submitted that it is the membership of the House of Representatives which constitute the Plenary of the House of Representatives, the highest decision-making body of the House of Representatives; and where the Deputy Speaker is present.
Koon through his lawyers prayed the court to have the Amended Bill of information proceedings promptly re-docketed, disposed of it dispatch, the April 23, 2025, opinion and judgment of the court in the Bill of information proceeding recalled and quashed and the prayer of the return Bill of information granted, cost to be ruled against respondents.
