Supreme Court Zambia recently announced its final decision on the Portland Cement Zambia case. In this decision, the bizarre claim by the Ventriglia family was effectively rejected by the Supreme Court. The Ventriglia family, sometime back, made a bizarre claim in which the previous decision from the higher Court of Appeal was questions for its authenticity. It should be noted here that on 31st January 2019, justice Mwinde on behalf of the higher Court of Appeal discarded the decision from the Lusaka High Court and gave a fresh verdict on the Portland Cement Zambia case. In this verdict, Dr. Mahtani owned Finsbury Investments was announced as the majority shareholder and legal owner of the factory with 58 percent shares. On the other hand, the Ventriglias were announced as minority shareholders with 42 percent shares and without any legal ownership over the factory. The higher Court of Appeal had also clarified the amount to be paid against majority shares which was finalised at K580,000 against K580,000 claimed by the Ventriglias.
After the claim by the Ventriglia family, a bench of three Supreme Court judges was established. These included judge Royda Kaoma, Judge Mumba Malila and Judge Micheal Musonda. During evaluation, the SC bench found that the Ventriglia family failed to comply with a critical legal requirement which is submitting claims against previous court cases within 14 days of the decision. In this case, the higher Court of Appeal had announced its decision on the Portland Cement on 31st January 2019. Based on this, the Ventriglia family applied for their claim after more than 1.5 years, making it invalid. Furthermore, the Supreme Court bench also said that circumstances surrounding the claim by the Ventriglia family was controversial and beyond the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Based on these evidences, the claim by the Ventriglia family was effectively rejected by the Supreme Court Bench.