OKONTI BORLEY & ORS v. HAUSBAUER LIMITED
2021
SUPREME COURT
CORAM
- BAFFOE-BONNIE, JSC (PRESIDING)
- APPAU, JSC
- DORDZIE (MRS.), JSC
- HONYENUGA, JSC
- AMADU, JSC
Areas of Law
- Property and Real Estate Law
- Evidence Law
- Civil Procedure
2021
SUPREME COURT
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
Justice Amadu delivered the Supreme Court’s judgment in a land title dispute over about 132.25 acres at South Nmai Dzovn between family heads (Appellants) and a Respondent. The High Court had granted all reliefs to the Appellants and ordered expungement of the Respondent’s registration. The Court of Appeal unanimously reversed after reevaluating the record, finding the Appellants failed to discharge their burden of proof and that their confirmatory deed, Exhibit ‘A’, could not have been executed in 1993 and bore multiple indicia of forgery. At the Supreme Court, most grounds of appeal were struck out under C.I. 16, leaving only the omnibus ground that the judgment was against the weight of evidence. Applying rehearing standards and the doctrine that fraud vitiates everything, the Court found the Appellants’ evidence of ancestral settlement and possession unsatisfactory, accepted the Court of Appeal’s analysis of Exhibit ‘A’, and dismissed the appeal, affirming the Court of Appeal’s judgment.
AMADU JSC:-
(1) In the High Court Accra, the Plaintiffs/Respondents/Appellants (hereinafter referred to as ‘Appellants’) obtained judgment against the Defendant/Appellant/Respondent (hereinafter referred to as ‘Respondent’) for all the reliefs endorsed in their statement of claim. The Trial Judge further ordered that the registration of the subject matter in dispute by the Land Title Registry in the name of the Respondent herein be expunged from the records. On appeal to the Court of Appeal, the judgment of the High Court was wholly reversed. It is the judgment of the Court of Appeal which is the subject matter of the instant appeal.
(2) The question for our decision in this appeal therefore is which of the two lower courts came to the right conclusion on the evidence placed before them in the matter. This is because whereas the Learned Trial Judge accepted the case of the Appellants on the strength of the evidence before him, the Learned Justices of the Court of Appeal unanimously upon a reevaluation of the entire record, arrived at their own finding that the Trial Judge failed to appreciate that on the preponderance of the totality of the evidence the Appellants who carried the burden of proof had failed to discharge their statutory burden.
(3) In the circumstances, our duty in the determination of this appeal largely depends on our own reevaluation of the record of appeal by which we should arrive at our own conclusion on the evidence adduced by the parties so as to justify where appropriate an interference with the decision of either of the two lower courts when satisfied from our consideration of the totality of evidence that, one of the verdicts was either unreasonable, perverse or unsupported by the evidence such that appellate interference would be authorized and justified.
(4) It is instructive to refer to the decision of this court in Tuakwa Vs. Bosom [2001-2002] SCGLR 61 a classicus which justifies the interference by this court to set aside the decisions of lower courts. In her statement on the law which authorizes the attitude of this court Sophia Akuffo JSC (as she then was) held in that case that:-“After reviewing the record, it was therefore our conclusion that on the preponderance of probabilities, the judgment of the Trial Judge in favour of the Defendant i.e. the Respondent was not supported by the totality of the evidence and the Court of Appeal erred in confirming the same without any scrutiny of the record”.
This position has b