ODONKOR AND OTHERS vs. AMARTEI

The plaintiff, representing the Nii Armah Sogblah family of Osu, Accra, filed a suit claiming damages and an injunction against the defendants for trespass and interference with land at Haatso near Accra. The plaintiff claimed long-standing occupation of the land (over 200 years) as communal land but acknowledged the defendants' ancestral ownership and that the plaintiff's ancestors settled there with the defendants' ancestors' permission. The defendants admitted ownership and contended the plaintiff's family were licensees occupying the land with permission, denying adverse possession. The dispute arose from competing claims over rights to sell or grant portions of the land to third parties, with both parties accusing each other of unauthorized alienation. The High Court refused an interim injunction sought by the plaintiff, but the Court of Appeal reversed this, granting the injunction against the defendants. The defendants appealed to the Supreme Court.

JUDGMENT OF ADADE J.S.C. On 9 March 1987 the plaintiff, as head and lawful representative of the Nii Armah Sogblah family of Osu, Accra filed an action against the defendants claiming ¢5 million damages for trespass and an injunction to restrain the defendants from interfering with a piece of land at Haatso, a village near Accra. Shortly after the defendants had appeared to the writ, the plaintiff applied for an interim injunction against them. In the affidavit accompanying that application, he averred that he and his family settled on the land a long time ago, “over two hundred years prior to the commencement of this action . . . farming on the surrounding arable land as communal land.” He does not say how they came by the land to settle on. But in paragraph 5 of the said affidavit he avers that the defendants claim the same land as their ancestral land, granted to the plaintiff’s ancestors for a settlement. The plaintiff does not seem to deny this claim. On the cont...