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February 25, 1980
HIGH COURT
GHANA
CORAM
On or about 22 May 1973, the plaintiffs issued out of this court a writ of summons against the defendants with the following indorsement:
"¢20,000 damages for libel published of an concerning their grand and great-grandparent one Kai Nka now deceased which said libel is defamatory of the plaintiffs and appeared in a pamphlet entitled `Observance of Funeral Rites of the late Otublohum Chiefs and Elders' as follows: `However, Kai Nka claimed that, being a queenmother, her son was the rightful heir and one night in December 1930, she burgled the stoolroom, broke the door and stole the stool, carrying if off to Ankra's house."
On September 5 that same year a five-paragraph statement of claim on behalf of the plaintiffs was filed which also read:
"(1) The first and the third plaintiffs are grandchildren of the late Kai Nka, deceased, stool mother of Otuoblohum, and direct descendants of Otu Brafo the founder of Otublohum. The second plaintiff is the daughter of the first plaintiff.
(2) The defendants are a limited liability company which printed and published a pamphlet entitled `Observance of Funeral Rites of the late Otuoblohum Chiefs and Elders.'
(3) In the said pamphlet appeared the following words concerning the said late Kai Nka, the ancestress of the plaintiffs:
`In this way it happened that a woman, Kai NKa, of the Ankra house, was a stool washer, or stood mother, of the Otublohum stool. This woman started calling herself, in [p.843] English, `queenmother,' trading on the general ignorance of Ga custom and the widespread knowledge of the Ashanti custom (popularized by the work of Captain Rattray) whereby a `queenmother' is the mother of the stool heir. There no such queenmother among the Ga.
However, Kai Nka claimed that, being a queenmother, her son was the rightful heir; and one night in December 1930, she burgled the stoolroom, broke the door and stole the stool, carrying it off to Ankra's house.
The officials and electors of Otublohum, who had not then — and still have not — nominated a candidate, summoned her for criminal burglary; but on the advice of British officials, had the case transferred from the police court to the Ga State Council, on the grounds that it was a `stool affair' and police cases, around stool affairs were undesirable.'
(4) The plaintiffs will contend that the above extract and particularly the portion beginning with `and one night in December 1930' and ending with `to Ankra's house ' is grossly defamatory
AI Generated Summary
Edward Wiredu J. considered whether three relatives of the late Ga stool mother Kai Nka could sue a publishing company in defamation over a pamphlet, "Observance of Funeral Rites of the late Otuoblohum Chiefs and Elders," that narrates an incident in December 1930 in which Kai Nka allegedly burgled the stoolroom and carried the stool to Ankra’s house. The defendants said the text was a faithful lithographic reproduction from M. J. Field’s 1940 government-published "Social Organisation of the Ga People." Focusing on actionability on the pleadings, the court restated that defamation must be published "of the plaintiff" and that class defamation is not individually actionable absent identification. Because the plaintiffs pleaded only their descent from Kai Nka and no innuendo or special circumstances linking the words to them, the court dismissed the action, entering judgment for the defendants, and noted libel is unknown to customary law.