Renowned Ghanaian lawyer Thaddeus Sory has opened up about his personal clashes with former Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey Torkornoo, including instances of perceived disrespect and procedural lapses that he believes undermined the dignity of the Supreme Court bench.
In a candid interview on The KSM Show, Thaddeus Sory, who served as lead counsel for business magnate Daniel Ofori in the petition that ultimately led to Torkornoo’s removal from office earlier this month, recounted his experiences appearing before her in several high-profile cases.
According to Sory, while he holds deep respect for judicial authority, some of the exchanges he witnessed and endured during his encounters with the former Chief Justice fell short of the decorum expected between the bench and the bar.
“By myself, I have had issues with the Chief Justice, personal issues of a kind that should not even happen in the lowest court of the land, and they were public. People saw it,” he stated.
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“People could read and let us show respect to people who we say are not learned. A lot of them have been to court, they’ve watched proceedings, they know how proceedings take place, they expect a basic level of decorum between the bench and the bar, and the bar and the bench know that,” he added.
He recalled one ruling where he objected to the improper service of documents to the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, in violation of a protocol issued by the Chief Justice’s office to the Speaker’s Office.
Despite the objection, the court overruled him in a decision he accepted as part of legal practice but took issue with the ruling’s content, which he said contradicted the very protocol it was meant to uphold.
“I didn’t have a problem with overruling me; I get that every day as a lawyer of my age and experience at the bar. But even the contents of the ruling did not sit well with the very protocol you had handed to the Speaker,” Sory remarked.
He added that such inconsistencies left him and others questioning the court’s impartiality.
The veteran lawyer stressed his deep respect for judicial hierarchy while noting his call to the bar by Justice Edward Kwame Wiredu Abban and his practice at the Supreme Court, longer than Torkornoo, who began her judicial career at the High Court.
“Remember that I was called to the bar by Justice Abban and so between Justice Abban and the removed Chief Justice, I have seen a number of them and I have worked with a number of them, and I started practicing at the Supreme Court before this removed Chief Justice became a Justice of the High Court. So she is my senior and I respect her and everything that the spectrum of senior lawyers stands for,” Sory affirmed while drawing a firm line over what he perceived as absolute condescension on the part of the former Chief Justice.
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“But you can’t be speaking to me about practice in the courtroom, about justice and assume that you are talking to a naïve person,” he asserte.
He underscored that the interactions went beyond professional disagreement into personal disrespect and possible conflict.
His comment comes on the back of the dramatic removal of Torkornoo on September 1, 2025, by President John Dramani Mahama following a recommendation by a five-member constitutional committee under Article 146 of the 1992 Constitution.
The committee, chaired by Justice Gabriel Scott Pwamang, investigated Ofori’s March 17, 2025, petition, which alleged 21 counts of stated misbehavior and four counts of incompetence, including financial misconduct such as the misuse of public funds for family travel to Tanzania and the United States, and improper administrative decisions like the transfer of a judicial staffer.
The inquiry reviewed over 10,000 pages of exhibits and testimony from 25 witnesses, finding her conduct inconsistent with the high office of Chief Justice.
Sory, whose firm Sory & Partners Law has handled various landmark cases, noted the irony that his client became the petitioner in the process that ended Torkornoo’s tenure.
“Apart from disrespect, it was not just right. You could see an interested person getting into an arena of conflict, and that was not one of the grounds for the petition but by myself I thought she didn’t handle her position right. Unfortunately for her and maybe the stars turned in one particular direction, it’s my client who was the petitioner,” he stated.
Watch the full interview below:
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