Kwadwo v. Sono

This case dealt with questions regarding the appropriate method of calculating the quantum of damages for the destruction of crops. There was an appeal by the defendant at the court below against an award of special damages for his destruction of cocoa trees and other crops on the plaintiff’s farm. The damage occurred in the course of the defendant’s timber and logging operations on land over which he had concession rights. The court emphasized that there were customary rights and privileges of the local population to hunt and snare game, to gather fire-wood for domestic purposes only, to collect snails and to till and cultivate farms and plantations on demised land. Any farmer on demised land suffering damage as a result of the timber operations of the concessionaire was entitled to compensation. In the view of the court, the President was empowered to grant leases for timber rights only. Such demise affected a person like the plaintiff only insofar as the concessionaire’s rights extended as well to timber standing in the plaintiff’s farm. But the defendant’s right of precedence to timber on the land did not in any way abridge the plaintiff’s legal rights and protection to his crops. The customary rights, privileges and interests of the local population over the demised land were legal. Not because they were declared so by and enactment but because they were immemorial customary rights and privileges which members of the local population had always enjoyed; those customary rights were preserved not because they were accepted from the defendant’s lease, but rather because they were rights of the subjects which could not be alienated. The plaintiff’s redress for the damage to his crops was not dependent on the terms and conditions of the lease, but based on his common law rights against an infringement of his proprietary interest. The court analyzed different methods of calculating compensation rates including the acreage method of assessing the special damages. This method was based on computation by the acreage of the number of cocoa trees destroyed, assuming that according to good agricultural practice an acre should contain a certain number of trees depending on the optimum spacing between any two trees. It concluded that the lower judge was right in principle in considering the factors as he did, but the figure arrived at was excessive and therefore an erroneous assessment of damage. In the result, the award was reduced in favor of the respondent.