[1990]DLSC2265 • June 28, 1990 • Supreme Court •
KUMA AND ANOTHER vs. KOI-LARBI
The respondent/plaintiff claimed title to two plots forming part of land originally leased by the Nii Odoi Kwao family to the Akwapim Union under a 99-year lease dated 9 May 1940, supplemented on 20 December 1945. One plot was assigned to him by the Akwapim Union represented by its president, Philip Kwabi Arthur-Baidoo, on 9 March 1980, and the other by Arthur-Baidoo personally on 27 March 1980, the latter deriving from a prior lease registered as No. 986/68. The appellant/codefendant, Adelaide Newman, claimed title under a later conveyance executed in her favour by the Nii Odoi Kwao family on 18 August 1978. The dispute turned on whether the family had validly re-entered and determined the 1940 lease, whether clause 2(a) of that lease entitled the family to resume the land, and whether the family could validly grant the disputed plots to the appellant. Portion indicating this in the judgment: “The main issue which arose for determination at the close of pleadings was whether the union or the family had the right to make grants of land in the area covered by the lease.”
read moreAikin J.S.C. delivered the judgment of the court. In March 1980 the plaintiff-respondent who in this case claims that he is a member of the Akwapim Union (a friendly society) obtained two pieces of land by way of assignment, the first from the Akwapim Union represented by its president, Mr Philip Kwabi Arthur-Baidoo on 9 March 1980 and stamped as AC 321/80, and the second from Mr Philip Kwabi Arthur-Baidoo on 27 March 1980 and stamped as AC 2336/80. Both pieces of land, the subject matter of the plaintiffs claim against the defendant, form part of a piece of land belonging to the Nii Odoi Quao family of Christiansborg and Accra and which land the family leased to the Akwapim Union for a period of 99 years for residential purposes. The deed of conveyance was dated 9 May 1940 and among the signatories for the family was Edmund Laud Nikoi O’Lai Kotey, described as a principal member of the family, and for the union, Philip Kwabi Arthur-Baidoo described as president. It was agreed that t.....