The High Court in Charlse Aryee v. Ruth Duncan and Anor (Suit No. GJ/0411/2026), has dismissed an appeal seeking to reverse a judgment that awarded a disputed Dansoman property to a man who paid for it in instalments but never received a signed conveyance, reaffirming that equity will not let a vendor’s family hide behind the absence of paperwork where the conduct of the parties tells a different story.
Background to the dispute
Charles Aryee sued Ruth Duncan and her son, Joseph Offei Tagoe, at the District Court, Adabraka, seeking declaration of title, injunction, an order compelling the Defendants to prepare an indenture, specific performance, and damages, over a plot at Mpoase, Dansoman, near Ebenezer Senior High School.
Aryee’s case was that Ruth Duncan agreed in 2015 to sell him a quarter plot for GH¢10,000, and later offered him the larger disputed parcel for GH¢50,000. He paid GH¢33,000 toward the purchase price, spent a further GH¢39,770 completing an uncompleted structure on the flood-prone land, and later attempted to pay the outstanding GH¢17,000 balance, which Duncan refused, claiming the property had appreciated and required revaluation.
The Defendants denied any sale ever took place. Their case was that Aryee was allowed onto the property purely on humanitarian grounds, after Tagoe had been confirmed as owner of the land in an earlier suit (High Court Suit No. BL/372/07). On this account, Aryee’s occupation was an act of charity, not a contract and any rent he collected from tenants he installed on the land was unauthorised.
The Trial Court’s Findings
The trial Magistrate found in Aryee’s favour, ordering the Defendants to convey their interest in the land to him upon payment of the outstanding GH¢17,000. A major factor for her reasoning was a set of payment receipts ( Exhibit H series ), whose narration referred to money received toward the purchase of land at Mpoase. The Magistrate found it implausible that a person given a “gratuitous gift” would also be issued receipts for the same transaction.
The grounds of appeal
Dissatisfied, Tagoe appealed on these grounds: that the judgment was against the weight of evidence, and that the trial court had failed to give effect to the earlier High Court and Supreme Court rulings confirming his ownership of the land in Suit No. BL/372/07.
Justice Isaac Addo dealt first with the ownership grounds. He found that the trial Magistrate had, in fact, expressly acknowledged Tagoe’s title, having stated in her judgment that the land “belonged to the 2nd Defendant, who was legally represented by the 1st Defendant before her demise.”
The real dispute was not who originally owned the land, but whether Tagoe’s mother, acting as his attorney, had validly contracted to sell his interest to Aryee. Tagoe’s own counsel appears to have recognised this, abandoning these grounds in his written address, leaving only the omnibus ground that the judgment ran against the weight of evidence.
The court’s reasoning on part performance
The appeal turned on the Conveyancing Act, 1973 (NRCD 175), which requires that any transfer of an interest in land be by signed writing, and that a contract for such a transfer is unenforceable absent written evidence signed by the party to be bound. Section 3(1)(b) of the Act, however, preserves the equitable doctrine of part performance, provided the acts relied upon are unequivocally referable to the alleged oral agreement.
Justice Addo drew on the Court of Appeal’s decision in Djan v Owoo[1976] 2 GLR 401, which held that a receipt, while not itself a conveyance, may serve as a memorandum evidencing a contract of sale and can found an equitable interest. Where a purchaser has paid money and been let into possession, equity treats as done that which ought to have been done, entitling the purchaser to sue for specific performance compelling execution of a formal deed.
Applying this, the court held that Aryee’s possession, his extensive renovation of the property (Exhibit C series), and his subletting of portions of it to tenants (Exhibit J series) amounted to unequivocal acts of part performance, consistent only with a purchaser asserting an interest in land he believed he had bought, not a licensee occupying on sufferance.
The evidentiary weaknesses in the Appellant’s case
The judgment was unsparing of the Appellant’s evidence. The witness who testified for the Defendants at trial was not Ruth Duncan, who died before trial and was never formally substituted, but Tagoe’s own attorney, Jacqueline Offeibea Tagoe. Under cross-examination, she conceded she had no personal knowledge of the 2015 negotiations between Aryee and Duncan, and that her account of events was hearsay relayed to her by her sister after her mother’s death.
Justice Addo invoked the well-established principle from Tuakwa v Bosom [2001-2002] SGGLR 61, that an appeal against the weight of evidence obliges the appellate court to review the entire record and not merely reassess witness credibility, to determine whether the trial judge’s conclusions are reasonably supported. He also cited Ackah v Pergah Transport Ltd[2010] SCGLR 728, which places the burden squarely on an appellant to identify from the record precisely where the trial judge erred.
On the burden of proof, the court applied sections 11(1) and 14 of the Evidence Act, 1975 (NRCD 323), and relied on the Supreme Court’s guidance in In Re Ashalley Botwe Lands; Adjetey Agbosu v Kotey [2003-04] SCGLR 420, that a defendant with a counterclaim cannot simply deny the plaintiff’s case, he must adduce evidence to induce a favourable determination. Tagoe, the court found, failed to discharge that burden on his counterclaim, while Aryee had proved his case on the preponderance of probabilities.
The High Court’s Ruling and Implications
The High Court affirmed the trial court’s judgment in its entirety, dismissed the appeal, and awarded costs of GH¢15,000 against the Appellant. The judgment will be enforced at the District Court, Adabraka, once a certificate is issued under the seal of the court pursuant to Order 51 rule 15 of C.I. 47.
The decision reinforces a principle in Ghanaian land law that, while statutory writing requirements serve to protect vendors against casual or unsubstantiated claims, they cannot be used as a shield by a vendor or her successors who have accepted payment, permitted possession, and stood by while the purchaser developed and let out the property, only to later deny that any sale occurred.
Where the parties’ conduct unequivocally points to the existence of a sale, the courts may look beyond the absence of a signed indenture and give effect to the substance of the transaction and the parties’ apparent intentions.
