<p style="text-align: center;"><strong><u>JUDGEMENT</u></strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>AMES J.A. </strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Everyone, whose work is in the courts of West Africa, is well accustomed to land cases in which the plaintiff claims a declaration of title to land. We are also well accustomed to a defendant pleading that the issue is res judicata. But I cannot remember any case in a my years in which the plaintiff did both these things at the same time. That is what has happened here. The plaintiff claimed a declaration of title to land and at the outset pleaded <em>res judicata</em>. This was tantamount to his saying:--</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;">“I am claiming a declaration of title to this land but I need not prove my claim and you, the defendant, cannot make any defence, because the issue is res judicata, by reason of a 1940 case, in which you unsuccessfully sued me for a declaration that the boundary between us ran along my side of the disputed lands which you claimed to be your land.” </p></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;">If this is the correct state of affairs, it seems to me that the plaintiff ought to be non-suited and mulcted in costs for havin…</p>