Publisher of Oxford English Dictionary has asked a Lagos Court to strike out a suit filed against it by a Nigerian lawyer; Emmanuel Ofoegbu, seeking N10m damages.

The lawyer claimed that the dictionary misplaced the meanings of the words “mortgagee’’ and “mortgagor” which made him suffer loss of professional reputation and embarrassment.

In the 1999 edition of the Oxford English Mini Dictionary which the lawyer claimed that  “mortgagee’’ was wrongly defined as  the borrower in a mortgage transaction and “mortgagor’’ wrongly defined as the lender.

But the publisher asked the court to strike out the case because the Oxford English Mini Dictionary has been revised 3 times since the 1999 edition. Consequently the errors had been corrected in these 3 editions. Implying that Emmanuel Ofoegbu should have referenced the latest edition before taking it to court

The publisher said it would not accept liability because “Oxford Mini Dictionaries are published as general reference tools and not designed or held out as dictionaries of legal terms for use by legal practitioners.”

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