NYAMEKYE v. TAWIAH AND ANOTHER

JUDGMENT OF APALOO C.J.

Apaloo C.J. delivered the judgment of the court. [His lordship reviewed the evidence and continued:] As respondent's evidence about the persons who successively occupied the stool and the royal house from which they hailed tallied with the appellant's and therefore lent support to the rotatory principle urged by the appellant, it was submitted to the appellate National House of Chiefs that whatever defects there might be in the trial tribunal's judgment, its holding in favour of rotation must be right and should accordingly be left undisturbed. The appellate house rejected that submission and delivered itself as follows:

"A plaintiff succeeds on the strength of his own case and not on the weakness of the defendant's case. The onus of proof always lies on him who alleges a certain fact, and unless this proof is made, the plaintiff cannot succeed. It is therefore wrong to submit that the plaintiff must succeed because certain aspects of his evidence were corroborated by the defendant."

If this proposition of law means that a party cannot prove his case by admissions from the mouth of his opponent or his adversary's witness, it is wrong and offends both principle and authority. In Tsrifo V v. Dua VIII [1959] G.L.R. 63 at pp. 64-65 Ollennu J. said:

"Where the evidence of one party on an issue in a suit is corroborated by witnesses of his opponent, whilst that of his opponent on [p.267] the same issue stands uncorroborated even by his own witnesses, a Court ought not to accept the uncorroborated version in preference to the corroborated one, unless for some good reason (which must appear on the face of the judgment) the Court finds the corroborated version incredible or impossible."

This enunciation of principle was approved by the Supreme Court in Yaw v. Domfeh [1965] G.L.R. 418 at p. 423. See also Asante v. Bogyabi [1966] G.L.R. 232, S.C. and Banahene v. Adinkra [1976] 1 G.L.R. 346, C.A.

How does the principle stand in relation to the facts of this case? The only matter on which the parties were in disagreement was that the three "royal houses" agreed in 1970 to nominate a candidate to the paramount stool by turns and that that agreement was acted upon until it was breached to give rise to the present dispute. The appellant and his witnesses produced both viva voce and documentary evidence in proof of this. The respondent and his sole witness although professedly controverting this issue made admissions which support