EDWARD OFFEI-BEKOE vs ALHAJI ASUMA DEBA & ANOR

On the 23rd day of March 2023 the Defendant/Applicant in Suit No. LD/0239/2022 filed the instant Application praying the Court for an order dismissing the Suit on grounds that it is unreasonable, frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of the processes of the Court.

The Application was resisted by the Plaintiff/Respondent.

I have critically examined the arguments put up in support of and against the Application by Counsel for the parties and really appreciate their knowledge of the law for which reason there is no need for me to repeat same.

A look at the Affidavit in Support of the Application and the arguments put up by Counsel for the Respondent depicts the Respondent is contesting the location of the land claimed by the Defendant/Applicant.

Counsel for the Respondent further submits that the action is not an abuse of the Court’s process.

In NAOS Holding Inc v Ghana Commercial Bank Ltd [2011] 1 SCGLR 492, the Supreme Court, speaking through Dotse JSC, observed at page 498 of the Report thus:

“In discussing the issue of the abuse of the Court process, it is important to understand what the principle of abuse of the Court process is all about. In the Supreme Court case of Sasu v Amua-Sekyi [2003-2004] 2 SCGLR 742, Dr. Date-Bah JSC, in his concurring opinion stated the principle of abuse of process (at pages 768-769 of the Report) as follows: ‘In addition to the cause of action and issue estoppels… there is the related doctrine of abuse of process, commonly referred to as the rule in Henderson v Henderson [1843] 3 hare 100 whose essences was set out by the English Court of Appeal in Barrow v Bankside Agency Ltd [1996] 1 WLR 257 at 260 as follows:

‘The rule in Henderson v Henderson … requires the parties, when a matter becomes the subject of litigation between them in a Court of competent jurisdiction, to bring their whole case before the Court so that all aspects of it may be finally decided (subject, of course, to any appeal) once and for all. In the absence of special circumstances, the parties cannot return to the Court to advance arguments, claims or defences which they could have put forward for decision on the first occasion but failed to raise. The rule is not based on the doctrine of res judicata in a narrow sense, or even on any strict doctrine of issue of cause of action estoppels. It is a rule of public policy based on the desirability, in the general interest as well as that of the parties themselves, that litigation should not drag on