A legal practitioner, Ogedi Ogu, has filed a N10m lawsuit against Oxford
University Press, publisher of Oxford Dictionary, over an alleged
wrongful definition of the words “mortgagee’’ and “mortgagor” in the
dictionary.
The first defendant in the suit filed before the
Lagos State High Court in Igbosere is the University of Oxford while
Oxford University Press was joined as the second defendant.
In
his statement of claim, Ogu claimed that he was embarrassed and suffered
a loss of reputation as a lawyer when he relied on the definitions of
the words in Oxford Dictionary, which, he claimed, were found to be
incorrect.
According to him, in the Oxford Mini Reference
Dictionary and the Oxford English Mini Dictionary, which he purchased in
2005 and 2006 respectively, the word “mortgagee’’ was defined as the
borrower in a mortgage transaction, while “mortgagor’’ was defined as
the lender.
According to him, Oxford Dictionary mixed up the meanings of the two words.
Ogu,
in his statement of claim, said he relied on the definitions while
offering a legal advice to a professional colleague, who later pointed
out to him that the definitions were wrong
According to him, his
professional colleague drew his attention to the correct position in
many other dictionaries apart from Oxford, which defines the word
“mortgagee” to be the lender and “mortgagor” to be the borrower.
Ogu
claimed that he had since suffered a loss of professional respect among
his colleagues, as his legal advice was no longer being sought.
He
said on account of this, he instructed his lawyer, Emmanuel Ofoegbu, to
write a pre-litigation letter to University of Oxford and Oxford
University Press on November 4, 2016, seeking redress.
He said
the defendants replied with a letter dated November 30, 2016, by their
legal director, admitting the wrong definitions complained of but
refused to accept any liability.
The letter, he said, read
partly, “Our dictionaries are made available as a reference tool only;
they are never held out by OUP as being an alternative to seeking
independent legal or financial advice, and we cannot take responsibility
for an individual’s decision to use them as such.”
Ogu said it was consequent upon this that he filed the suit, seeking damages in the sum of N10m.
He
also wants the court to order Oxford University Press to always ensure
that all dictionaries published by them have a caveat warning readers
that they are only available as reference tools and that anyone who
relies on them as an alternative to seeking legal or financial advice,
does so at his risk.
The court has yet to fix a date for the hearing of the suit marked Temp/36433/2018.
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