YOUNG TRADING AGENCIES v. STAVELEY & CO., LTD.

JUDGMENT OF KINGSLEY-NYINAH J.A.

This court was denied the benefit of useful arguments from the respondents when this appeal was called on for hearing. The respondents, though amply notified of the pendency, and fully aware of the actual hearing of this petition, never deemed it necessary to appear, either by themselves, or else by counsel, to respond thereto. They filed no declaration in writing and they submitted no written arguments to the court, in accordance with rules 22 and 24 of the Court of Appeal Rules, 1962 (L.I. 218). We therefore heard arguments from the appellants only.

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The plaintiffs-appellants, a trading concern in Accra, and owners of a Fargo bus registered as GG 2314, sent that vehicle to the defendants-respondents, a motor sales and servicing establishment, also in Accra, for repair. The defendants received the Fargo bus, valued at N¢3,500.00, and agreed to carry out repairs thereon.

As the plaintiffs (hereinafter designated the appellants) tell it, the vehicle was sent to the defendants (hereinafter referred to as the respondents) some time in August 1968. A few months later (in March of the following year, 1969), when the appellants went to the garage to collect their bus in exercise of their right to its immediate possession, and to settle the repair bill on it, the respondents were unable to deliver the vehicle to them. And when several subsequent attempts at its recovery failed to produce that vehicle, proceedings were consequently instituted by the appellants who complained in their writ as follows:

"(a) The plaintiffs' claim is against the defendants for the return of their Fargo bus No. GG 2314 or its value which said vehicle the plaintiffs sent to the defendants and which the defendants have refused to release to the plaintiffs in spite of repeated demands.

"(b) N¢20.00 per day for loss of use from 18 April 1969 to date of judgment."

In answer to that averment the respondents admitted having received, kept and repaired the vehicle. But they also roundly disclaimed liability for the non-delivery-up of the bus, on the ground that:

"(7) By a formal decree of the Grade I District Court, Accra, the workshop manager, of the defendants company was prohibited from giving over the said bus to F.E. Young.

"(8) In compliance with the said order of the court, the defendants were requested by the deputy sheriff to surrender and the defendants did surrender the said bus to the deputy sheriff."

The respondents further conte