AFRANIE v. QUARCOO AND ANOTHER

JUDGMENT OF FRANCOIS J.S.C.

Mr A. A. Mensah died on 22 July 1985. His will admitted to probate on 7 October 1985 amply testified to a lifetime of industry and the employment of considerable commercial acumen. For he accumulated a large empire whose extent he did not wish whittled down by sale or other alienation. There was a further insight to his commercial philosophy with the charge to his personal representatives to assist his widow and a son to manage his estate with competence, and not to suffer any diminution of his estate.

Among the deceased's properties was house No. C415/4 which was rechristened by the appellant as "Hotel de France", when he became a lessee of it. It is this 30-roomed hotel that was the bane of Mr. Mensah's life. After letting it to the appellant for a term of five years, Mr. Mensah fought unavailingly to recover possession at the end of the five-year term. When he died, his personal representatives in obedience to their charge, stepped into his shoes to continue the fight for repossession. After losing in the High Court, the decision was reversed in the Court of Appeal. That judgment is assailed in this court.

The reasons given by the Court of Appeal in reversing the High Court, among others, appear to be the following: The defendant-appellant's lease had run out for over ten years. Yet he was sitting pretty enjoying a gratuitous extension of the lease in defiance of the owner's claim for recovery - a claim he fought for with his very last breath. That was enough foundation of the genuineness of the claim. Moreover, there was evidence of the critical expansion needs of the landlord's hotel business.

In effect, the appellate court was satisfied that the five years' lease had expired, and six months' notice had been duly given for repossession, and further that the premises were genuinely required for the landlord's use. In other words, the plaintiffs had fully [p.542] complied with section 17(1)(h) of the Rent Act, 1963 (Act 220) which is as follows:

"(h) where the lease has expired and the premises are reasonably required by the landlord to be used by him for his own business purposes, such premises being constructed to be used as such, if the landlord has given not less than six months' written notice to the tenant of his intention to apply for an order for the recovery of the possession of, or the ejectment from, the premises."

The appellate judgment must be presumed to be right until the appellant demonstrates its defi