2017
SUPREME COURT
GHANA
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The Supreme Court of Ghana, per Dotse JSC, dismissed the appeal by Osei Godwin Teye, member of the Dokutse/Peteye/Atta Abla family, against judgments in two consolidated land suits brought by the Manya Aklomuase and Dormkpati Adjimeh families. The Plaintiffs claimed ancestral ownership and sought declarations, damages for trespass, recovery of possession, and injunctions over lands at the foot of the Krobo Mountains and at Kpong. Teye relied on the Jackson Commission Report, a composite plan, and prior judgments including SAS George v Hilodjie and Dugbartey v Flisowski, as well as a 2007 ex parte writ of possession from the Circuit Court, Akropong-Akwapim. The Supreme Court upheld the High Court and Court of Appeal’s findings that Akuse lands do not cover the disputed areas, that estoppel per rem judicatam does not apply to non-parties or different lands, and that the writ of possession was invalid and set aside. The Court issued a practice direction mandating precise boundary descriptions or survey plan references for future writs of possession.
DOTSE, JSC:-
The tenacity of purpose, with which the Defendant/Appellant/Appellant, hereafter referred to as Defendant, has pursued the appeal against the Plaintiffs/ Respondents/ Respondents in writs Nos I and 2 respectively in this court after his serial loss of the suits in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal despite the overwhelming evidence on record to the contrary, has led us to commence this judgment with what we call the “Basic Principles” stated by Nii Amaa Ollennu, a distinguished Jurist, author and statesman in his pioneering book entitled, “ Customary Land Law in Ghana” page 1 thereof, where the author states thus:-
“The term land as understood in customary law has a wide application. It includes the land itself, i.e. the surface soil, it includes things on the soil which are enjoyed with it as being part of the land by nature, e.g. rivers, streams, lakes, lagoons, creeks, growing trees, like palm trees and dawadawa trees, or as being artificially fixed to it like houses, buildings and structures whatsoever, it also includes any estate, interest or right in to or over the land or over any of the other things which land denotes; e.g. the right to collect snails, herbs or to hunt on land. Therefore any suit, the substance of which is a claim to ownership, possession or occupation of land or a claim to any estate interest or right in, to, or over land or any such thing on land is a land suit. Consequently, a claim to ownership of buildings and structures on land is a land suit, so is a claim to waters, streams, the foreshore, creeks, including the right to fish in such waters…”
FACTS
It must be noted that there were two different sets of writs of summons initiated by persons from two different families against the same defendant as the title of the suits indicate in the High Court and this has culminated through the Court of Appeal to this court.
It must also be noted that, initially the suits were against Peteye Osei Quarshie, and upon his demise, he was then substituted by Osei Godwin Teye, the Defendant herein.
FIRST WRIT
On the 7th day of August 2007, the Plaintiffs herein in the 1st writ of summons issued the writ against the Defendant in which they claimed the following reliefs:-
a. “Declaration of title to all that piece or parcel of land lying, situate and being at the foot of the Krobo Mountains measuring 25.51 square miles or 16.325.37 acres more or less and bounded on the North by a parcel of land belonging to the Manya