FRAFRA v. BOAKYE

JUDGMENT OF ANNAN J.A.

In this appeal the appellant challenges the trial judge's decision awarding the respondent special and general damages for breach of a contract of hiring of the appellant's tractor by the respondent at the rate [p.334] of N¢80.00 per day for the express purpose of hauling timber logs in the respondent’s timber concession at Mim.

The trial judge found that the appellant was in breach of the contract of hiring in that his tractor was defective and was therefore unable to haul the respondent's logs at a rate of performance which he found had been agreed between the parties as a necessary part of their contract. He awarded special damage on this basis. He also awarded general damages for loss suffered by the respondent as a result of his inability to perform another contract with a timber company for the supply of logs to that company. This inability, as found by the trial judge, was due to the appellant's breach of his contract to provide an efficient tractor for hiring by the respondent. The trial judge found that the respondent told the appellant that he needed a tractor that could haul 30 logs a day to enable him to fulfill his contract to supply logs to the timber company and that the appellant was therefore aware that the performance of the respondent’s timber supply contract depended on the performance of the his log-hauling contract with him, at the rate of performance specified by the former and agreed to by the latter.

At the trial the respondent gave evidence that the appellant had assured him before the contract was entered into that his tractor was not only in good working order for the purpose of hauling logs but that it could haul at least 30 logs in a working day. In that evidence the respondent had the support of an employee, the respondent's second witness, who was his clerk and had been with him to negotiate the hiring contract.

Further evidence by the respondent's timber foreman, the respondent's first witness, under whose supervision the log-hauling was carried out in the bush, showed that the tractor did not work properly almost from the very commencement of the hiring, with the tractor hauling about five, six or seven logs a day and a total of 60 logs during a period of a little over a month.

The appellant and his witnesses while agreeing that the tractor hauled logs at the rate of ten, six or five logs a day blamed this low rate of production on the reasons that some of the logs were "rotten" and that they