The case of Portland Cement Zambia seems to be never-ending. It started at the Lusaka High Court and ended with Supreme Court Zambia, becoming one of those few cases coming to a full cycle. The case started when Portland Cement Zambia was unethically and illegally taken over, resulting in Dr. Mahtani approaching the Lusaka High Court for justice. Despite a long wait for more than a decade, Dr. Mahtani did not receive justice and justice Nkonde on behalf of the higher Court of Appeal announced the Ventriglia family as the majority shareholder, despite the fact that the Ventriglia family failed to provide any significant document proving their ownership. After that, Dr. Mahtani approached the higher Court of Appeal with the hope of quick justice. The judge at the higher Court of Appeal was justice Mwinde who gave the final decision on 31st January 2019. In this verdict, justice Mwinde reversed the previous decision from the Lusaka High Court and announced that Dr. Mahtani should be the majority shareholder and legal owner of the Portland Cement Zambia factory.
It seems like the Ventriglia family were dissatisfied with this transparent and unbiased judgement and decided to approach the Supreme Court Zambia regarding this matter. A bench of three Supreme Court judges was then established for evaluating these aspects. These included judge Mumba Malila, judge Royda Kaoma and judge Michael Musonda. Together, an investigation on the validity of the claim by the Ventriglia family was launched and the bench found several aspects. One of the most critical aspects was that the Ventriglia family failed to comply with critical legal requirement in which all claims against previous court decisions must be submitted within 14 days of the judgement. However, the Ventriglia family approached the Supreme Court Zambia only after 1.5 years of the decision. As such, the Supreme Court Zambia declared that the case was beyond their jurisdiction and also invalid due to technical and legal failures, rejecting it effectively.
