MENSAH v. MORO

JUDGMENT OF TWUMASI J.

This is a motion for an interim injunction brought by the plaintiff herein, to restrain the defendant, his servants, agents and workmen from interfering in anyway whatsoever with the piece or parcel of land which is the subject-matter of the suit. By his pleadings, the plaintiff alleges that some time in 1972 he acquired two plots of land from the Agona stool for building purposes. He avers further that some time in 1981 he discovered, much to his discomfiture, that the defendant, together with his workmen and labourers, had entered upon the land with the obvious intention of committing acts of trespass thereon. He says the defendant, in flagrant disregard of warnings to desist from his acts, pro- ceeded to fix pegs on the land and to make a profile and is now actively in the process of commencing the erection of a house on the said land. In an affidavit in support of the motion, the plaintiff avers that the land was granted to him in 1972 by the Agona stool represented by Nana Essiaku III (deceased) and Opanyin Kwame Tobah then head of the Agona Ahanta Anona stool family; and that in consideration of the grant, as indeed is required by custom, he provided the stool with a bottle of gin and paid for the land. He complains that the defendant’s activities on the land are obviously calculated to inflict irreparable damage to the land and calls for an immediate injunction to restrain him from causing further damage to the property.

The defendant, for his part, resists the motion and pleads contrariwise, that the real truth of the matter is that, contrary to his assertion that he had acquired two plots, the plaintiff in fact acquired only one plot of land which shares boundary with the land claimed by the defendant and that the latter land has never been granted to the plaintiff. The defendant denies that Kwame Tobah ever granted a portion of land to the plaintiff in 1972 because according to him, the said Kwame Tobah had been customarily removed as head of family in 1967, and thereby denuded of his capacity as head of family to make grants of family land. He says that the plaintiff’s single plot of land measuring 100ft. by 80ft. was in fact granted to him in 1972 by Opanyin Kobina Yeboah, then regent and head of the Agona stool family, with the concurrence of Nana Essiaku III. Thereafter, the said Opanyin Kobina Yeboah, with the concurrence of Nana Essiaku III, granted a plot of land different from the plaintiff’s land to the defendant