OSMOND v. HUGHES

This is from the judgment of the High Court, Sekondi, (Bruce-Lyle J. as he then was) dated 24 January 1964. By the judgment, the court dismissed an action brought by the appellant (hereinafter called the plaintiff) against the respondent (hereinafter referred to as the defendant) for a declaration of title to land and building situate at Ashanti Road, Takoradi, described as plot No. 21 and for recovery [p.407] of the sum of £G312 which the plaintiff claimed the defendant collected as rent form tenants of the said premises.

The plaintiff was born in June 1927. He is the son of the late Osmond Alfred Hughes who died in or about 1959. He has a serious deformity in the leg and is a near cripple. The learned trial judge described this as an abnormality in one leg. His late father was a qualified pharmacist and was, for many years, employed in that capacity by government. Some years before his death, Mr. Hughes retired from government service on pension and thereafter set up private practice as a pharmacist. The plaintiff who left school in 1954, was for a while, in the employment of Messrs. Elder Dempster Lines as a book-keeper but in 1955, he left this employment at his father's request and joined the latter in his dispensary. He continued to assist his father in his dispensary until his death about 1959. The evidence suggests that the late Mr. Hughes formed a great attachment for the plaintiff and both seemed to have lived together in affection till the former's death.

In 1937, when the plaintiff was aged ten, his father applied for the leasehold premises the subject-matter of this action. Although the application for the land was admittedly addressed to the Assistant Commissioner of Lands by the late Mr. Hughes, it purported to come from Kofi Osmond which, on the undisputed evidence, is the plaintiff's name. The applicant gave his address as c/o O.A, Hughes and the application was signed simply as "Kofi Osmond." The application was successful and on 8 June 1938, the Governor of the Gold Coast acting by the Commissioner of Lands executed a lease in which the land in question was demised to "Kofi Osmond" for a term of 99 years subject to the usual covenants. There is no evidence as to who executed the lessee's part of the document, but it seems clear that this was done by the plaintiff's father who merely wrote the name of the lessee as "Kofi Osmond."

A photostat copy of the original lease was produced in evidence and this shows that it is a building leas