Alleged Medical Negligence: Ex-staff accuses TotalEnergies of manipulation to frustrate judicial process
A medical negligence victim and former TotalEnergies employee, Mrs. Oghenero Ozobeme, has accused the oil firm of manipulating the judicial process with alleged false submissions to frustrate her pursuit of justice in a medical negligence suit filed against the company.
This comes as she filed an application for leave of the Appeal Court to appeal her judgment, but she is yet to be afforded a court date for six months since she filed the appeal. Ozobeme recalled that on April 30, 2020, amid the Covid-19 lockdown, TotalEnergies wrongfully terminated her employment without providing any reason for the termination.
She said the termination letter was dispatched after some management staff of TotalEnergies were subpoenaed to testify in court.
She said the termination letter was dispatched after some management staff of TotalEnergies were subpoenaed to testify in court.
“The termination letter was delivered to me at home in April 2020 during the COVID-19 restrictions. “It came from the Managing Director. In fact, the line manager had assigned tasks to me on the same day as I worked from home,” she claimed.
Please update pare 7:
DAILY TIMES reports Ozobeme filed a suit (NICN/LA/58/2021) at the National Industrial Court on account of her wrongful and brutal termination where she was vindictively denied monetary entitlements and her end of service retirement benefits.
TotalEnergies sought to desperately frustrate her pending suit (NICN/LA/186/2018, where she had alleged despicable corporate misconduct and medical negligence.
Ozobeme claimed that TotalEnergies is seeking to overwhelm and frustrate her with dilatory tactics and deliberate false submissions.
However, Ozobeme, who claims to have been denied justice in the trial court in the unfair termination suit, has been forced to appeal the judgment but is yet to get a date for over 6 months to move her application for leave.
In a recent statement to Journalists, Ozobeme rejected the judgment of the industrial court on the premise that the judgment relied on the deliberate false submissions and misrepresentation of facts by TotalEnergies and its lawyers.
According to Ozobeme, she filed an application for leave of the appeal court (CA/LAG/PRE/ROA/CV/407M1/24) to appeal the judgment “but has been continuously denied a court date for over 6 (six) months and still counting.”
On her grounds for faulting the verdict, she said the judgment delivered by Honorable Justice Professor Elizabeth Oji relied on deliberate false deposition and misrepresentation of facts by TotalEnergies and Templars Lawyers, causing a devastating miscarriage of justice.
She declared as untrue the deliberate false submission of TotalEnergies and its Templars Lawyers that “the Voluntary Severance Package, VSP, is a retirement and resignation exit package initiated at the option of the employee.”.
“That the terms of voluntary retirement and resignation are provided for in the Collective Agreement and there is no mention of a Voluntary Severance Package or any additional benefit founded on employee application,” she said.
Ozobeme declared that “the 2020 VSP is not known to the employment contract or labor statute and was never placed before the Court.”She denied,
“That for the claimant to be entitled to early retirement benefits, she was required to seek approval from her employer.”
The medical negligence victim declared that she had filed an application to the National Industrial Court seeking a mandatory injunction “restoring parties back to status quo ante, having been unlawfully terminated without reason,” while the case was pending before Honourable Justice Paul Bassi JCA.”
In a more recent development, she filed a petition to the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee on the matter, seeking disciplinary measures on the lawyers from the Templars law firm for infamous conduct in a professional respect.
The claimant further stated that she remains unrelenting “and passionately appeals for support from everyone that shares the aspiration of human dignity, where innocent young women are not persecuted because they are blessed with reproductive capacity or a distinctive gender.”
She believed that the fight was not just for her alone but for every victim of medical negligence fighting for justice and accountability against powerful special interests. However, when DAILY TIMES contacted TotalEnergies media team, Noble Ikpami for comment on the allegation of “Manipulation of the Judicial Process” on Friday and Saturday morning, he had yet to respond as of filing the report.
