A newly wedded woman, Lawrentta Sawyer, has threatened to sue Mercy Aigbe over the red dress the Nollywood actress wore for her birthday photoshoot.
Another person facing a lawsuit is the designer of the dress, Elisha Maryam, popularly known as Rikaotobyme.
The threat was made in a letter dated January 8, 2018 and addressed to Elisha’s Rikaoto Fashion Services by the law firm of Capitalfield Attorneys.
Titled “Notification of Breach of Contract and Allegations of Fraudulent, Unlawful and Criminal Conduct”, the letter accused the designer and the actress of converting their client’s property for “selfish gains”.
The controversy became public knowledge when Sawyer in an Instagram post on January 1 accused Elisha of giving Mercy a red dress which she (Sawyer) paid the designer to make for her wedding reception.
According to the bride, after going incommunicado and not picking her phone for hours, the designer finally gave her another dress on December 29, a day to her wedding, blaming her failure to produce the red dress as promised on delivery problem.
Events took an uglier turn when the bride saw Mercy Aigbe wearing what looked exactly like her dress in pictures posted on Instagram on December 31, a day to the actress’ 40th birthday.
Sawyer, known online as Rettypety, took her case to the public court of Instagram, calling the designer “heartlessly wicked” and that she will not get away with what she has done.
All hell was let loose, thereafter, as social media users cursed out the designer and the actress for allegedly attempting to ruin a fellow woman’s wedding.
Despite apologies from the designer and explanation from Mercy that she knew nothing about how the dress was made, Sawyer has now threatened to sue both of them.
In the letter to Elisha,’ the lawyers say there is evidence of “a deliberate and fraudulent conspiracy between you and Ms Mercy Aigbe to convert our client’s legal property for selfish gains.”
The designer was, therefore, advised to resolve the matter within seven days, failure upon which the lawyers say they “will seek legal redress on behalf of our client and further, draw the attention of the relevant law enforcement agencies, including but not limited to the Nigerian Police, to your ignominious conduct.”
Mercy last week said she had instructed her lawyer to look into the matter “and see how best to approach this from a legal point of view without festering an already open wound”.
