OTOO v. BINEY AND ANOTHER

The plaintiff by her writ of summons claimed damages for trespass committed by the defendant on the plaintiff's land and prayed further for a perpetual injunction restraining the defendant. The plaintiff's case is that she bought for £G600 a piece of land at Aboom Wells Road, Cape Coast, by auction conducted by private treaty by a licensed auctioneer named Essien. As a result of this sale a deed of conveyance, exhibit B, was executed in her favour by the vendor William Essuman-Gwira Sekyi, the administrator de bonis non of the estate of William Edmund Pieterson deceased of Cape [p.138] Coast. Immediately after the sale she took possession of the land which included premises situated on the western portion of the land. In the year 1962, the plaintiff discovered that the defendant had trespassed on the land by erecting pillars and by commencing building operations notwithstanding the plaintiff's warnings to the defendant to keep off the land. The defendant's case is that he approached the co-defendant for land to build on in 1960. The co-defendant assured him that the land in dispute was free to be sold, and after making searches at the Accra and Sekondi deeds registries which revealed that there were no registrations in respect of this piece of land, he took a conveyance from the co-defendant for the purchase price of £G141 15s. including £G6 15s. trama. He stamped and registered his deed of conveyance exhibit 1. The defendant therefore maintained that as a purchaser for value without notice who had registered his conveyance, his deed enjoyed priority over the plaintiff's unregistered conveyance by virtue of section 21 (1) (b) of the Land Registry Ordinance1 The defendant further maintained that the plaintiff was never in possession of the land covered by the defendant's deed of conveyance and had never exercised any rights of ownership over this land.

This is a formidable defence and according to law the plaintiff by suing in trespass and claiming an injunction against further trespass had put her title in issue: see Kponuglo v. Kodadja2 followed in Nkyi XI v. Kuma (Bedu subst.).3 The plaintiff did not and in fact could not deny the fact that her deed of conveyance was not registered but relied solely on the fact of her possession and the provisions contained in the Land Registry Ordinance, s. 24 which reads, "Registration shall not cure any defect in any instrument registered, or confer upon it any effect or validity which it would not otherwise have h