Yvonne Nelson wins GHC500,000 defamation case against Mona Gucci

An Accra high court has awarded Yvonne Nelson GHC500,000 in a defamation case against Mona Gucci for malicious statements she made about the award-winning actress on the Accra-based Neat FM.

Mona Gucci, who is a socialite and presenter, was not in court when the judgment was passed.

The court presided over by Justice John Eugene Nyante Nyandu ordered Gucci to pay GHC500,000 to Nelson and also to apologise for her defamatory publication about the famed actress.

She has also been restrained from making any further defamatory comments about the Princess Tyra star.

In May 2020, Mona Gucci, speaking in an interview with Neat FM, a subsidiary of the Despite Media Group, named an extensive list of Ghanaian female media and social personalities and ascribed to them the amorphous title “slay queen”.

The term “slay queen”, she said, could be equated with a woman of loose morals who, under the cover of a legitimately working and honest life, engages in prostitution and other illicit activities for sustenance.

Social media outburst

In the interview Mona Gucci boldly mentioned Yvonne Nelson’s name in the list of people she referred to as slay queens.

“Yvonne doesn’t show off, but she is a slay, because you know the slay queen: it entails a lot. We have both showing off and some contacts and people, who we know that, the things that you do and the lifestyle you exhibit, someone is paying for you behind the scenes,” she alleged.

The statement largely presented Yvonne Nelson as perverted in character and as someone who engages in immoral and illicit activities.

When Nelson’s counsel wrote to Mona Gucci to retract her malicious statement and apologise, she refused; in fact, she then went on a social media tirade, pouring out more disparaging comments.

Yvonne Nelson took up the matter in court and sued her. However, after the case was called, Mona never showed up in court despite the bluffing on social media.

According to court documents, she tried to evade court officials and avoid being served the writ of summons.

The documents quote Yvonne Nelson’s counsel as saying: “On the 13th July 2020 the Plaintiff/Applicant herein caused a writ of summons and statement claim to be issued against the defendant praying for the reliefs set out in the statement of claim and the endorsement on the writ of summons.

“My Lord, it became necessary to serve the processes by substituted service due to the evasiveness of the defendant. That on the 8th June 2021 an order for substituted service was granted. That my Lord will notice from the docket that the defendant was served by an Affidavit of Posting dated the 8th July, 2021.

“That a search dated 13th October 2021 shows that the defendant has made no response to the suit. That accordingly with the rules, we, therefore, pray this court for an order for Judgment in Default of Appearance. Respectfully submitted,” the document says.

The court therefore granted the application as prayed by Yvonne Nelson’s counsel.