NYAASEMHWE AND ANOTHER V. AFIBIYESAN

ANIN J.A

This is an appeal by the defendants from the concurrent judgments of two lower courts in favour of the plaintiff in a suit for a declaration of title to a parcel of land, two poles square, at Asafoa Gyintu, and for ¢250.00 damages for the defendants’ “wrongful entry and cultivation of food crops upon the said land.” On the issue of title, the trial magistrate held that the plaintiff and his witnesses “had proved beyond reasonable doubt that the disputed land was owned by the plaintiff’s ancestors”. He also held that there had been a valid arbitration into the land case between the parties which ended in favour of the plaintiff; but that “what disturbed the mind of the court was the absence of the defendants at the inspection.”

The doubt entertained by the magistrate about the legal effect of the defendants’ absence at the inspection of the locus in quo was dispelled by the learned judge of the Sekondi High Court who heard the first appeal of the defendants. In a two-page judgm…