JUDGMENT OF KPEGAH J.
This ruling concerns an objection taken to the tendering of a letter by the plaintiffs. The defendants are said to have leased from the plaintiffs, 575 acres of land for 99 years at an annual rent of ¢500. The plaintiffs sought, through meetings with the representatives of the defendant-company, a review of the rent but failed to secure this because the defendants would not agree to any such review.
Frustrated in their initiative, they decided to engage a solicitor who wrote to the defendants reiterating the plaintiffs' demand that the agreement is unfair and there is a need to review the rent. This probing letter was intended to excite the defendants to react favourably to the plaintiffs' demands contained therein. The defendants in turn gave the letter to their solicitors who replied to the plaintiffs' claim and demand. This reply was marked by the defendants' solicitors "without prejudice." The plaintiffs are seeking to tender, not this reply, but the one written by their solicitor which prompted the said reply. Mr. Ebow Quashie, counsel for the defendants, objected on the ground that since their reply was marked "without prejudice" it operates to make the original letter of the plaintiffs inadmissible; so also their reply.
The point I am called upon to decide here is very simple; whether [p.382] where a party replies a letter and chooses to mark his reply "without prejudice", this precludes the original letter to which the said reply is being given from being tendered in evidence by the party who wrote it. This consideration will invariably involve the meaning and scope of the term "without prejudice." In the Dictionary of English Law (1965 ed.) by Earl Jowitt, the learned author gave the definition and scope of the term which I adopt as my own. This is what appears at page 1388:
"The term is given to overtures and communications between parties in the course of negotiation, or between litigants before action, or after action, but before trial or verdict. The words import an understanding that if the negotiation fails, nothing that has passed shall be taken advantage of thereafter; so, if a defendant offers, 'without prejudice,' to pay half the claim, the plaintiff must not rely on the offer as an admission of his having a right to some payment."
McTaggart v. McTaggart [1948] 2 All E.R. 754, C.A. was a case in which on the hearing of a petition by a husband for divorce on the ground of the wife's desertion, the parties ga
