ASANTE v. SARPONG

JUDGMENT OF APALOO J.

This is an appeal from a judgment of a circuit court which on the 28th January, 1963, dismissed a claim by the plaintiff against the defendant for damages for seduction.

The plaintiff is the father of a young woman whose name is Lydia Asante. She was born in 1943, and at the time material to this action, lived with her father and attended school. She brought forth a child on the 17th May, 1961. That would indicate that she must have taken seed the previous August. The plaintiff claimed that she was debauched by the defendant whom he claimed was responsible for her pregnancy. Accordingly, he claimed damages against him for seduction. Lydia herself gave evidence and said the defendant was her boy friend. It was nothing like platonic friendship. It was clearly on the admitted evidence, a lewd form of association. Lydia said she frequently had sexual intercourse with the defendant. The defendant did not seek to dispute this. Indeed, he himself called one Kwaku Dua who said the defendant passed the nights with him and that, "Lydia comes to the defendant and sleeps with the defendant." The defendant, however, denies responsibility for the pregnancy and claimed that his association with Lydia came to an end in January 1960. Accordingly, he contended that he could not be the author of the pregnancy which, on my reckoning, took place in or about August 1960. Lydia denied that she had had sex relations with any other man, and there is, in fact, no evidence that she associated about August 1960 with anyone else.

Accordingly, on this part of the case the issue which the learned circuit judge was called upon to determine was: "Did the association between the defendant and Lydia come to an end in January 1960, so that the defendant could not in the ordinary course of nature have been responsible for Lydia's pregnancy which took place on or about August 1960?" The learned circuit judge found for the defendant on this issue although he did not seem to me to have formulated the issue so very clearly. As he decided this issue adversely to the plaintiff, he thought it unnecessary to pronounce on the other issues and proceeded to dismiss the action.

The plaintiff felt himself aggrieved by that decision, and appealed to this court on two grounds. The first ground argued by counsel on behalf of the appellant was that, "The trial judge misdirected himself as to the issue involved in taking judicial notice of certain matters of which the law did not perm