NTSIN VII AND ANOTHER v. DOUGAN AND ANOTHER
1960
HIGH COURT
GHANA
CORAM
- ADUMUA-BOSSMAN, J
Areas of Law
- Property and Real Estate Law
1960
HIGH COURT
GHANA
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The case involved a land ownership dispute resolved by focusing on recent and verifiable evidence rather than conflicting traditional stories. The trial court's approach, upheld on appeal, involved assessing the exercise of ownership rights and incidents within living memory, thereby discrediting the plaintiff's traditional history and claims.
JUDGMENT OF ADUMUA-BOSSMAN J.
(His lordship referred to the facts and continued): The trial court, faced with the task of resolving the issue of ownership on the conflicting traditional stories and on the other evidence of the exercise of rights of ownership in respect of the disputed area as well as adjoining parcels, decided to determine the disputed issue of ownership on the [p.27] evidence other than the traditional stories. In deciding on that course of action they followed a course often adopted by some of our distinguished judges of the past, notably Sir Brandford Griffith, C.J., who in Kwaku v. Brown (Digest, p. 106) said as follows:-
"where there is so much uncertainty and so much indefiniteness, and where land has until recently been practically of no value, all that the Courts can do and what they ought to do, is to accept accomplished facts, whatever may have been the state of things 200 years ago,"
So to Hall, J., who in Re Asamangkese Arbitration (Div. Ct. 1926-29 p. 234) adopted the observation, reported in West Africa of November 8th, 1927 as made by Lord Buckmaster in the case of Dua v. Tandoh (P.C. 1874 - 1928, p. 109) as follows: - "my judgment is far more influenced by actual facts, as you find them when the dispute begins, than by tradition."
(His lordship referred to the judgment of the trial court, and continued):
It seems to me that those clear findings of fact, based on the clear and irrefutable evidence of acknowledged boundary owners and to some extent on the admissions of the plaintiff himself and his witnesses, are unimpeachable. They have, in my view, withstood the able efforts of counsel for the plaintiff to impugn them.
But it seems to me further, that in so far as it might have been necessary to resolve the conflict in the traditional histories, the plaintiff's was substantially discredited by certain events and incidents, established by the evidence - including admissions by the plaintiff himself and by some of his witnesses. The test for resolving such conflict is laid down in clear terms by Lord Denning in Adjeibi-Kojo v. Bonsie and Another (3 W.A.L.R. at p.260) as follows:
"Where there is a conflict of traditional history, one side or the other must be mistaken, yet both may be honest in their belief .... The best way is to test the traditional history by reference to the facts in recent years as established by evidence and by seeing which of two competing histories is the most probable."
When that test is app