Judgment :
The plaintiff as Attorney for the Methodist Missionary Trust Association claims against the Defendants jointly and severally, each as Head of his Family, "Specific performance of a contract for sale of land known as Kwabotwe land situate at Cape Coast.
The area of the land in question, at one time deemed to be 52.28 acres but subsequently found to be 27.674 acres the purchase price originally agreed on has to be reduced proportionately. (The underlining is mine.)
Trama has been paid and received and part payment of the purchase price has been made and received.
The Defendants have broken the said contract since it was concluded."
Now it is clear that at the date of the writ the purchase price fot the reduced acreage of land had not yet been agreed and that no binding contract of sale such as to convey an equitable estate was in existence, such as could found an action for specific performance.
(The court then examined the evidence, and continued:)
No question arises of any rescission of a contract since the parties at no time during those negotiations were "ad idem" as to the purchase price for the 27 acres. Again this fact is clearly evidenced in the language used in the writ.
It was not a rescission, it was a crying off of negotiations.
I am satisfied that both parties intended that their agreement should be reduced to the form of a Deed known to English Law, but that the terms of that agreement should be governed by the native customary law. And here as the last straw of a drowning man the plaintiff seeks to shew that "trama" having been paid there is a binding contract by customary law which cannot be overreached.
The payment of "trama", as I understand Sarbah in his Fanti Customary Law (2nd Edition), is that it is the evidence of a completed and binding contract made with the mutual assent of the competent contracting parties having mutual consent and agreed upon the boundaries and the amount of the consideration.
Its effect is precisely the same as is the memorandum in writing in English Law. It is the evidence of a binding contract. Its only difference perhaps is that it is deemed to convey at once the legal estate whereas the memorandum in writing conveys but the equitable.
No consideration having been agreed no payment of "trama" could arise. The defendants, after the delays and procrastination of the plaintiff, were entitled to call off the negotiations and, as they did, sell to another purchaser. I would add that in his ab
