Results for From the Courts

A Supreme Court judge dismissed an appeal filed by a letter writer, Kele’a newspaper and two others in a defamation case that awarded judgment and costs against them back in 2013.

A visiting Tongan couple from New Zealand who wanted to adopt a young girl had their application rejected by the Supreme Court on Friday, April 22. The couple intended to take the 5 year-old to be raised in their home in Christchurch. However, the court concluded that the child was better off living in Tonga.

Havea Folau will have his name registered in a town allotment at Vaini village in Tongatapu, ordered the Lord Chief Justice who found that the Minister of Lands had no power in this circumstance to cancel the grant or make a grant of this same piece of land and register it in the name of another person, in a ruling on 18 April in the Land Court of Tonga in Nuku'alofa.

Tongan resident, Christopher Pedras, also known as Antone Thomas Pedras, may face deportation from Tonga after an extradition hearing took place in Nuku’alofa on March 29. The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division wants Pedras removed from Tonga to face fraud charges including an alleged $8 million Ponzi scheme.

A 16-years imprisonment sentence was imposed on a man who had pleaded guilty to multiple counts of having carnal knowledge and indecently assaulting two girls who were under the age of 12 in 2014. The security of young children in Tonga is paramount here, said Mr Justice Cato on 7 April, at the Nuku'alofa Supreme Court.

Tonga’s Chief Justice has quashed a decision by the Minister of Public Enterprises, Hon. Poasi Tei, to end the terms of two directors of the Tonga Broadcasting Commission who had refused to resign from the board voluntarily. The Supreme Court’s ruling also exposed a failure of the government in “a duty of candour” to disclose all relevant facts and the content of its decision making process.

Tonga's Court of Appeal first session this year began at the Nuku’alofa Supreme Court on Tuesday, 29 March to end with the delivery of judgments on Friday, 8 April. An appeal by Mateni Tapueluelu a former Tongatapu MP who lost his parliamentary seat last year will be heard this week.

The Tonga Court of Appeal's first session will be held from March 29 to April 8 and will hear an appeal by former Tongatapu No. 4 People’s Representative to Parliament, Mateni Tapueluelu.

Payment of a settlement for an undisclosed amount of money to Audra Watts, the widow of Kali Fungavaka, will be made from the Tonga Attorney General’s Office, who will also supervise the setting up of a trust for the benefit of the victim’s children by his first wife.