OPANIN ADUSEI JOB & ORS VS STEPHEN KWAME BOAFO & ORS

[1] Introduction This is an action, commenced by the issuance of a Writ of Summons, dated 11th September 2020. Judges have been advised to look with suspicion when claims are made against deceased persons.

In the case of Kusi & Kusi vs. Bonsu [2010] SCGLR page 60 at page 73, 82-84 the Supreme Court stated the principle succinctly as follows: “…the claims the plaintiff family made against the deceased Asante in respect of the property, were all critical assertions against the deceased, in whose favour the presumption of ownership stood.

These claims belong to the class of evidence that must first be received with the greatest caution and scrutinized carefully before being given the requisite weight.

It is however clear from the evidence that the plaintiff family acquiꢀed themselves creditably, by discharging satisfactorily, the legal burdens placed on them… The main argument is that the respondents, i. e. the plaintiff’s family, failed to provide the requisite corroboration to the claim that Asante signed the petition exhibit A. There is no intractable rule of law that charges or claims against a dead person could not succeed without corroboration.

To the contrary, the discernible principle was that a court could proceed on the uncorroborated evidence if satisfied about its truthfulness.

The only rider or caution was that the court must examine the evidence critically, with utmost care, weighing or sifting it thoroughly, to ensure there were no loopholes or that the charge or claim did not suffer from any absurdities or the like.

A judge in receipt of uncorroborated evidence consisting in the main of charges against a deceased person would not swallow the story lock, stock and barrel, but would first view it from a suspicious standpoint.

If the story as presented was neither incongruous, preposterous, unreasonable, illogical, nor incredible, then the judge might proceed to give it the weight it deserved.

The exercise would relate to the cogency or the weight to be aꢀached to the evidence given…1”1 See also the case of Gandy V. Macauly(1885) 31 CH D 1, “where it was held that when an attempt is made to charge a dead man in a 2 matter, in which if he were alive he might have answered the charge, the evidence ought to be thoroughly sifted, and the mind of any Judge who hears it ought to be, first of all in a state of suspicion; but if in the end the truthfulness of the witnesses is made perfectly clear and apparent, and the tribunal which has to act on th