GHANA AIRPORT COMPANY LTD. v. OSEI ANSONG

JUDGMENT

AYEBI J.A.

1. This is an interlocutory appeal against the ruling dated 8th June 2011 in which the trial judge granted an application for stay of execution in favour of the defendant/appellant/respondent hereinafter referred to as the defendant.

2. In the substantive suit, the plaintiff/respondent/appellant hereinafter referred to as plaintiff, claimed against the defendant the following reliefs:

(a) A declaration that the defendant’s conduct in constructing on the Dote end of the runway of the Kumasi Airport land which is part of the said Airport is trespassory, unlawful, contrary to public good and the interest of the plaintiff which is under legal duty to ensure the safety of the Kumasi Airport and its environs.

(b) A declaration that the intended expansion of the said Passions International School is also trespassory and inhibitive of the intended extension of the Kumasi Airport.

(c) An order of cancellation of any document or transaction purporting to in any manner granting title to or vesting part of the Kumasi Airport lands to the defendant as any such document will be fraudulent and null and void ab initio.

(d) An order of perpetual injunction restraining the defendant, its agents, representatives, assigns, officials, privies and persons or entities acting on its behalf and/or at its direction from in any (sic) continuing the patent illegality.

(e) Recovery of possession of the portion of the said Kumasi Airport upon which the defendant has trespassed and develop in spite of warnings and entreating by the plaintiff.

(f) General, special, exemplary and punitive damages for defendant’s fraudulent and wrongful conduct.

3. In the defendant’s statement of defence to the claim of the plaintiff, he did not contest the claim of the plaintiff to the land upon which the school is being run. The plaintiff therefore filed an application for summary judgment under Order 14 of the High Court Civil Procedure Rules, 2004 (C.I. 47). At the hearing of the application, defendant per his counsel affirmed that he does not claim ownership of the land. Defendant thereon intimated that he had acquired a piece of land which he was developing in order to vacate the plaintiff’s land. He pleaded for time to move out.

4. The defendant having pleaded more or less liable to the claim of the plaintiff, the trial judge entered judgment for the plaintiff. Earlier on the court granted an application for an order of interlocutory injunction brought by the plain