March 27, 2019
SUPREME COURT
GHANA
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The Ghana Supreme Court, per Justice N. S. Gbadegbe, JSC, dismissed the defendants’ appeal arising from a land dispute over Agorvorkorpe in the Dangme East District. The High Court had earlier granted the plaintiff’s family declaration of title and trespass damages, but the Court of Appeal reversed title and declared the Sega family owners, while preserving the plaintiff’s family’s possessory rights and restraining interference. In the Supreme Court, the defendants attacked the plaintiff’s capacity, the land’s identity, the grant of possessory rights, and trespass damages. The Court held the plaintiff had capacity due to encroachment jeopardy, the head’s indisposition, and procedural admissions from the defendants’ counterclaim. Both parties claimed the same land, so identity was not in issue. Evidence and Section 48 of the Evidence Act supported possessory rights, and the trespass‑damages challenge was incompetent. The appeal was dismissed unanimously.
GBADEGBE, JSC:-
This is an appeal from the judgment of the CA by which the decision of the trial High Court in the matter herein, a land cause was reversed. In these proceedings, we will retain the description of the parties which they had before the trial High Court. Similarly, reference to the grounds of appeal will be made in the manner in which they were set out in the notice of appeal. Before us, the defendants have lodged an onslaught against the judgment of the CA on several grounds. These grounds relate to the capacity of the plaintiff to mount the action, the order of possession that was declared in the plaintiff and the finding in trespass. The said grounds will be referred to in so far as they are relevant to the issues for our decision in this appeal.
The backdrop to the action herein may be briefly narrated as follows. The plaintiff took out the action herein against the defendants claiming a declaration of title and other ancillary reliefs. The action herein was provoked according to the plaintiff by the defendants’ unlawful entry upon portions of the disputed land that their family has been in possession of over several years. While the plaintiff claimed the land by means of a grant obtained from the defendants’ family by their predecessor in title and their subsequent undisturbed possession of same until acts of encroachment thereupon by the defendant’s family, the defendants claimed that the land was only granted over the period at different times to two members of the plaintiff’s family for farming and related activities only. The said grant, it was asserted by the defendants was not absolute and was accompanied by the acknowledgement of the title of the defendants’ family by their grantees. After the close of pleadings and other proceedings had towards trial, the action proceeded to trial.
After a full-scale trial of the action, the High Court delivered its judgment by which it accepted the version of the plaintiff and rejected that of the defendants. Accordingly, the trial court decreed title in respect of the disputed land in the plaintiff and granted in his favor ancillary reliefs including damages. For trespass. The defendants promptly appealed to CA and succeeded in obtaining a reversal of the judgment. In particular, the learned justices of the CA concluded that the plaintiff was unable to prove the grant that he alleged and as such declared title to the disputed land in the defendants on the counterclaim filed to the action. It