THE ESTATE OF K. NTRAKWA & SOLOMON NTRAKWA v. BOGOSO GOLD

ASIAMAH, J.S.C.:

In this appeal the appellant is seeking an order from this court reversing the judgment and assessment of damages of the Court of Appeal which upheld a ruling by a co-ordinate High Court to the effect that an earlier judgment of another High Court in the same jurisdictional locale was amenable to a review by another High Court Judge in view of the fact that the original judge had gone on transfer and therefore not available to take a review of the judgment.

The grounds of Appeal are three-fold:-

(1) The Court of Appeal erred in law in holding that the lack of service of Hearing Notice on Appellant after Summons for Directions was taken in the absence of the representative of the Appellant did not render the decision of the Trial Court null and void.

(2) The Court of Appeal erred in law in holding that the failure of the Trial High Court to assess damages did not nullify the award of damages made by the Trial Court.

(3) The Court of Appeal erred in not assessing or causing damages to be assessed before awarding damages of ¢3,000,000,000.00 (three billion cedis) against the Appellant.

In dealing with this appeal I would like to give a synopsis of the proceedings of the trial High Court for the purpose of revealing the rather tortuous track that this case has traversed up to this court.

Everything seemed going aright up to the time pleadings closed. At the summons for directions state, though the defendant/appellant was duly served through one Cladstone Dzebu at Bogoso, the defendant/appellant never showed up in court on the 24th January 2001 the date fixed for the taking of the Summons. The Plaintiff was present and the summons was taken, the court accepting the issues set down by the Plaintiff. In the court’s minutes on this day this is how the judge concluded the business for the day:

BY COURT: Issues accepted and set down for trial. 27/2/2001 for hearing. The defendants be served with Hearing Notice.

It is obvious from the court’s notes above that the defendant/appellant was to be informed by a court process that hearing of the case would commence on 27th February 2001 and that he should attend court. There is no evidence on record that this order of the court was executed. However, hearing could not commence on the adjourned date, that is on 27/2/2001. Again there is no record that the case was even called at all on that date. In the judgment of the Court of Appeal at p 162 of the record of proceedings the Court commented on thi