HALABY v. HALABY AND OTHERS

JUDGMENT OF KORSAH C.J.

Korsah C.J. delivered the judgment of the court. [His lordship referred to the facts and continued:] in September 1951, the first and second defendants together with the third defendant, a licensed auctioneer, who had been instructed to sell the partnership's properties including one store with goods and a safe arrived at Nandom and requested one Elias Khoury, a former employee of the first defendant to deliver up the store, with stock of goods and the safe, to the auctioneer for sale. They found that all the goods had been removed from the store. Upon enquiry the defendants discovered the goods in a room in a house about 50 yards from the original store, where the plaintiff is alleged to have opened his own store and put Elias Khoury who was the firm’s former employee, in charge of it. [p.230] Elias Khoury stated in his evidence: “Neif Halaby told me to take goods from store of Halaby Bros. And take it to his store. Four days later the auctioneer came and sold the goods, small (sic) of his were inside.” There is evidence on record showing that not only were the goods identified as some of the stock of goods belonging to Halaby Bros., but also the stock books of the firm were found in the same room where the goods had been stored, together with the safe which had been in the firm’s store. The said goods were sold at public auction and the safe taken to Kumasi, where it was later opened before the registrar of the High Court.

Upon these facts and other evidence on record, the learned judge found, inter alia: "that the plaintiff and Khoury used the device of opening up the partnership store to enable plaintiff to consolidate a business of his own by selling off partnership goods." In effect, the plaintiff, with the object of defrauding his co-partners in the partnership firm of Halaby Bros., caused the partnership goods to be removed into the room which he called his new store, and which he is alleged to have opened as part of his own separate business after the judgment of the Appeal Court.

There is evidence on record which is accepted by the trial court that the value of the partnership goods found in the room was £G538 7s. 3d, and that any surplus goods, i.e., goods found in the said store which did not belong to the partnership firm have been accounted for in the partnership account in court; and that there was no money in the safe.

The learned judge further held: “If the plaintiff had conducted himself as an honest man, h