FRANCIS H. ABRAHAM v. FIDELITY BANK GHANA LIMITED
2024
Areas of Law
- Banking and Finance Law
- Contract Law
- Tort Law
2024
AI Generated Summary
The Plaintiff sued the Defendant for unlawfully freezing his accounts without a court order and failing to comply with court orders to defreeze the account. The court held that Defendant breached its contractual duties and acted negligently. Furthermore, the refusal to honor Plaintiffs cheques was deemed defamatory. Plaintiff was awarded general, exemplary, and defamation damages.
SEDINA AGBEMAVA J.
Mrs. Heather Abraham was estranged from her husband, the Plaintiff herein. She sued her husband over proceeds from the sale of property they jointly owned.
The proceeds from the sale of the property was lodged in the Plaintiffs Dollar Account with the Defendant’s Branch at the A & C Mall, East Legon, Accra.
Once the writ was issued out of the Registry of the High Court, the Defendant’s Branch was purportedly served with a copy of the Writ and Statement of Claim.
It must be noted that Defendant was not a Party to the suit instituted by Mrs. Abraham, neither was Mrs Abraham Defendant’s Client.
In addition to this. Defendant is a Corporate entity: and the mode of service of a Writ on a Corporate entity by the existing Law in 2018 when the Writ was issued was certainly not by serving a Branch office, assuming that this bizarre strategy was acceptable.
On receipt of the Writ of Summons and Statement of Claim, the Defendant of its own accord took another startling decision and froze both the Cedi and Dollar denominated accounts of the Plaintiff, their customer. This was without a Court Order.
On the 6th of June, 2018 the Court determined an application for Interim Injunction and ordered that Mrs. Abraham be paid an amount of Sixty-Five Thousand United State Dollars (US$65,000.00) pending the final determination of the suit she had initiated.
The Court also ordered that Plaintiffs account be defrozen. The Plaintiffcomplied with the Court’s Orders and issued a cheque to his wife’s Counsel but Counsel inexplicably returned the cheque and Defendant refused to release the hold on Plaintiffs Account.
Thus begun the Legal ping pong between the Parties herein with a series of legal processes filed all the way to the Apex Court.
The matter between the estranged couple was finally settled out of Court and the terms adopted by the Court as its Consent Judgment.
It stretched over a period of Three (3) years and throughout this period, the Defendant refused to release its stranglehold on the Plaintiff’s Account despite the decision of the High Court being affirmed all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Defendant only yielded and unfrozed the Account in January of 2021 after the suit was settled.
This is the brief background to the genesis of the present suit where the Plaintiff is seeking the following reliefs;
i. A declaration that the Defendant breached its Banker Customer contractual duties to Plaintiff when it failed and or refused to defr