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JUDGMENT
PWAMANG JSC:-
My Lords, this is a case that commenced in the High Court on 11th January, 2007 but experienced inordinate delay in the prosecution of the appeal to this court such that, more than ten years back, the points of law that arise in the case were determined by the Supreme Court in a different case. If the parties and their counsel had used that final position of the law as stated in that earlier case as a guide, this case ought to have been amicably settled long ago to make this judgment unnecessary. Then, in 2013, the Supreme Court applied that precedent in another case, this time, involving this same plaintiff/appellant/appellant (the plaintiff) before us on a matter on almost all fours with this case, yet the case was not settled out of court. We do not know the reason for this appeal being pressed to the end after the parties themselves initially showed no interest in it, but the reality is, that the value of whatever money may be gained or saved by our decision today would not be what it would have been if the parties had settled the case amicably back then. In this judgment, we shall use the current denomination of the cedi since our currency was demonetised after the transaction subject matter of this case was entered into.
The background of this case is that, small traders in our society have always had challenges accessing bank credit to expand their trading activities. In 2005, the plaintiff and the Ghana Commercial Bank (now GCB Bank) identified that need and decided to turn it into a business opportunity by assisting small traders in Accra to access credit and to also make margins for themselves. The bank dealt with a number of small traders associations including Mayekom Cloth Sellers Association, Ahenfie Cloth Sellers Association and the plaintiff herein. These associations that were registered as companies limited by guarantee were stated to be welfare associations established to address the welfare needs of their members. As part of their activities, they cooperated with the GCB Bank and obtained loans at reasonable rates of interest to be shared to their members as working capital . However, the manner the leaders of the associations went about these otherwise legitimate business ventures landed all of them in litigations as, about one year after they disbursed small loans to individual traders, the Courts, especially in Accra, became inundated with suits instituted by the leaders to recover payments from the traders. Thus, thi