Source: http://www.ghanalandlaw.com/html/AttaPanyin.v.NanaAsani.htDir/AttaPanyin.v.NanaAsani.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 00:33:42+00:00

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APPEAL against a judgment of Owusu J. in an action inter alia injunction and possession. The facts are fully stated in the judgment of Francois J. A.
Brodie Mends for the appellants.
J. Mercer for the respondents.
It was the respondent's further case the, since that decision in 1961, the appellants had refused to accept the yearly tribute offered but had embarked upon a course of systematic harassment calculated to obtain a relief the court had significantly denied them, namely, the ejectment of the respondent and his people from the land. In the first of the consolidated suits therefore, the respondent sought to challenge the appellants' conduct and bring it to a halt.
The appellants agreed in the main with the averments pleaded by respondent which briefly recounted the history of the grant, the conditions attached thereto, to genesis of the 1958 action, and its conclusion in 1961 with the declaration of ownership in favour of the appellants and the refusal of the court to grant an injunction or exact forfeiture against the respondent and his subjects provided annual tributes were paid.
The appellants, however, controverted three specific matters. First, that the original grant vested any power in the respondent to alienate land especially to strangers without their consent. Second, that they had refused to accept annual tributes, and third, that they had molested the respondent. In turn they pleaded that the respondent in breach of his obligations under the grant had placed tenants on the land and goaded them into denying their over lordship. They contended that four of such tenants had been successfully sued in the High Court, Cape Coast, but had truculently refused to attorn tenant. Relying on these judgments the appellants counterclaimed for recovery of possession, an order upon the respondent's tenants to attorn to them, and an injunction against the respondent and his people from setting foot in the area. In issue for trial, consequently, were the matters above adverted to but more particularly the effect of the 1961 judgment of Adumua-Bossman J. reported as Atta Panyin v. Asani II 1961 G.L.R. 305.
In the second of the consolidated suits filed on 23 February 1966 the appellants used one Kwame Essuman (hereinafter referred to as Essuman) a tenant of the respondent. The claim derived its substance from the refusal of Essuman to attorn tenant to the appellant in terms of an order contained in a judgment of Charles J. of 1 December 1962. Essuman resisted this claim and denied the Charles J. judgment any validity,  relying on the derivative sub-title of the respondent. The appellants replied that the 1961 judgment of Adumua-Bossman J. (as he then was) estopped the respondent from litigating the issue.
On 14 February 1968, the two suits were consolidated for trail. As both parties relied largely on the judgment of Adumua-Bossman J. and to a lesser extent on that of Charles J., the evidence was extremely succinct. The argument in the trial court, rehearsed again in this court, was directed to the true construction and effect of these judgments. Counsel for the appellants in a fulsome and impassioned plea, exhorted this court to construe the judgment of Adumua-Bossman J. at its face value and to resist any temptations to interpolate. He argued that the late eminent judge did not lack clarity on legal issues and was the champion and best advocate of his own views. Any annotation of his judgment would consequently be unwarranted. It is readily conceded that it would be wrong to read into a judgment more than what an articulate and clear minded judge had inscribed. It is recognised also that Adumua-Bossman J., as was his wont, expressed his views forcefully with perception and at some length and his judgments betrayed no ambivalence on controversial issues. Consequently, this appeal must turn to a large extent on the true unvarnished interpretation of this judgment: specifically the nature of the appellant's holding as a stool tenant of a customary estate from the appellants. Adumua-Bossman J. was at great pains to trace the development of customary estates in Ghana. In his judgment of 1961, aforementioned, he examined in depth the right the usufructuary subject acquires in his holding in land and after examining critically the extent or quality of the respondent's usufructuary title in the light of decided authorities, concluded in favour of the respondent in upholding his right to remain on the land and deal with it. This appeal must determine whether the matters so examined came to a finality to preclude their further agitation, and sustain the plea of estoppel.
Our inquiry begins therefore with an examination of the respondent's usufructuary interest, and the first consideration is the nature of the grant the respondent's ancestors received from the appellants' forbears, some three hundred years ago.
There is no dispute that the radical title lay in the appellants. The 1961 judgment confirmed this. Equally uncontroverted is the term of the grant that the respondent should annually pay the appellants £G2 8s. 4d., and offer yams and sheep for the privilege of staying on the land with his subjects. The question, however, posed on these facts is whether the respondent was the possessor of a bare licence or a usufructuary title. For a mere occupational licence, denudes the grant of powers of control and disposition and seriously curtails and circumscribes the ambit of alienation.
These cases were indeed illustrative of fundamental principles of land holding in Ghana. But they are hardly apposite in their application to the instant case. In the present case, the grantee was stool which in its own right had subjects and strangers. Such strangers' holding, ensuring future customary services; the allocation being the quid pro quo for their fealty and all its entails, within the territorial and jurisdictional areas of the stool. Further the presumption remained undisplaced that the original letting took cognizance of future dealings of the grantee with the land; consequently any subsequent letting did not constitute a derogation of the grant. Secondly, since the grantee contracted to pay a yearly tribute, it could be rightly urged that this fee covered and exhausted any other form of rent that could legitimately be exacted as the grantee stool was in the position always to provide customary services. Thirty, the issue where both rent and tribute were payable, was properly before Adumua-Bossman J. who was seised of it and had made a final pronouncement thereupon which could not be reagitated.
Q. `` You are aware of the case decided by Adumua-Bossman J. between you and the people of Bedum?
Q. In the case part of your claim was that the defendant and his people, servants, agents, tenants, workmen and all others claiming right of access to the said piece or parcel of land derived from the defendant be restrained on oath from interfering or in any was dealing with the land the subject-matter of the dispute?
Q. And the court gave judgment against you in that claim?
A. Not, but I was not allowed to eject them.
Q. At the time of the suit these people you term strangers were already on the land?
A. I did not know until after the case and I invited them.
Q. The land has been in the hands of the Bedum people for about 300 years?
Q. After the war between your people and Bedum people you made Bedum people to pay annual tribute to you?
It cannot therefore in truth be said that the judgment did not deal with so prominent an issue as alienation to stranger. It is also furtherest from the truth to urge that such alienation came to the notice of the appellants after the said judgment. Assuming that the issue of alienation to strangers a had not been so distinctly raised and equally decisively determined, the appellants would still fail In the application of customary rules to a grant of this kind. For customary law abhors the placing of fetters on a usufructuary title other than the obligation to provide commutable services. A distinction must here be drawn between cases relied on by counsel like Kuma v. Kuma (1938) 5 W.A.C.A. 4, P.C. and Ado v. Wusu (1940) 6 W.A.C.A. 24 which turn on the denial of the existence of the overlord's title. In those cases it was sought by mere length of occupation to establish title adverse to the owner's. these were clearly breaches of customary tenure. In this case the radical title of the appellants is not in issue nor in jeopardy having been settled by the Adumua-Bossman judgment of 1961. An original grant to the respondent, qua stool, and its subjects has also been conceded. The issue for resolution was therefore  the quantum of the grant. It is in this context that the appellant's qualification to the grant to the effect of precluding alienation, must be viewed. Can the restrictions urged as fetters to alienation be valid?
In sum, it seems to me, that there can be no breach a priori. Alienation can take place without the overlord's prior consent but a subsequent refusal to provide the services custom demands can be visited by invoking customary sanctions. Hence the rule that alienation of a determinable estate even to a stranger can only be voidable and not void ab initio, and if the overlord fails to seek avoidance of the infringement of his residual rights of which he is aware, timeously, he would be estopped by acquiescence: see Buor v. Bekoe (1957) W.A.L.R. 26 and Bayaidee v. Mensah (1878) Sar.F.C.L. 171.
If alienation by a subject to another is permissible without the consent of the paramount stool on the basis that ``the fellow-subject will perform the customary services,'' how much more alienation by a grantee stool which exists in perpetuity and can be called upon to provide the customary services any time. The payment of tribute is, in a measure, an assurance that service will be rendered when demanded.
These prophetic words are with us already. If customary law is not to remain static, but advance with the times, the direction indicated in the Total Oil case (supra) must be nurtures and stimulated. Commercial necessity and the socio-political drive for unity dictate such courses. The Kotei case (supra) and Total Oil case (supra) advocate the unfettered and the fullest extension of usufructuary rights. To the same end is the decision of this court in Robertson v. Nii Akramah II  1 G.L.R. 445 at pp. 454-455.
The net results is that whereas the appellants as overlords cannot re-alienate to another person without the consent of the respondent tenant, the contrary cannot hold good if there is provision for the commutation of services, and if the respondent's tenancy has not been determined.
The consideration of the usufructuary title, in its original concept and modern extension with reference to old authorities has been extensive though I hope not unduly so. It has been undertaken because it seems to me necessary for a proper evaluation of the adumua-Bossman J.'s judgment and the resolution of the problem posed in this case. Confession must also be made to a predilection to accord the early decisions the utmost respect unless it is plain that they have been overtaken by changed circumstances or their eroded by contrary decisions and subsequent legislation.
The whole controversy must be open to final adjudication. A piecemeal approach is not permitted. Thus the established rule that not only substantial issue, but all matters that impinge on the issue are properly the subject of res judicata.
The principle is further illustrated in Humphries v. Humphries  2 K.B. 531, C.A. where a plaintiff successfully sued for arrears of rent under a lease. Further rents having accrued the plaintiff sued again. The defendant then for the first time pleaded that the lease did not satisfy the requirements of section 4 of the Statute of Frauds, 1677 (29 Cha. 2, c. 4). It was held that as the defendants had failed to raise this defence in the former action he was precluded form raising it in the second action. See also Oloto v. Williams (1944) 10 W.A.C.A. 23.
``quite clear that in the 1925 suit there was in issue before a competent Court between the present Respondent and the present Appellant (through his licensees) the same question as is now raised, namely whether the present Appellant as a tribute-paying tenant of the present Respondent had the right under Awori custom to reap palm nuts on the land of which he was tenant either by himself or by his licensees.
 The learned judge had the strong views of Smith J. in Sappor v. Narnor (1949) D.C. (Land) '48-'51, 197, on a similar problem to draw inspiration from. I am of the opinion Owusu J. was right and must be upheld. This aspect of the appeal fails.
Turning to the second consolidated suit and the effect of the judgment of Charles J. ordering Essuman to attorn tenant to the appellants, I am of the view that this cannot sustain a plea of res judicata against Essuman and his grantor, the respondent, in view of the existence of the earlier judgment of Adumua-Bossman J. It must be remembered that the judgment was one of many judgments in favour of the appellants against tenant farmers of the respondent. Quite apart from any legal inference that may be invoked by the earlier judgment of Adumua-Bossman J., the subordinate and restricted title of a tenant cannot delimit a paramount title: see Ababio v. Kanga (supra).
In my view Charles J. completely misconstrued the 1961 judgment of Adumua-Bossman J. when he failed to distinguish the distinct strands of the claim before the learned judge and their respective resolution. The claim for title did end in the appellants' favour; the respondent failed in his bid to establish a grant because his grantees were not clothed with sufficient authority to dispose of stool land. The court however found that the respondent had genuinely been misled into thinking his document of title conferred proprietary rights. In those circumstances he could not be said to have asserted adverse title to be visited with the sanction of forfeiture.
``Kwame Essumang, the defendant in this suit is a stranger farmer who derived his title from th Bedum stool, He was on the land prior to the commencement of the action before Adumua-Bossman J. which declared a possessory title in the Bedum stool. Since the Adumua-Bossman decision in 1961 estops the Ewumaso and the Breman-Asikuma stools form denying the possessory tights or the Bedum stool, the judgment in the Asikuma-Ajumako-Enyan Local Court on 29 March 1962, ordering the defendant to approach the plaintiffs for the purpose of entering into a tenancy agreement and the subsequent appeal No. 16/62 before Charles J. on 18 December 1962 are null and void''.
This conclusion of Owusu J. is right and must also be upheld. The appeals in the consolidated suits fail and are hereby dismissed.

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