1
Hebeas Corpus-Rule Nisi
Discharged-Appeal--Person
Detained at Large.
An appeal does not lie in any
case of proceedings for or upon
a writ of Habeas Corpus when at
the time of bringing the appeal
the person alleged to have been
detained is at large.
P. A. Renner
for the Plaintiff-Appellant.
]. Henley CMlssey for the
Defendant-Respondent. The
foJ1owing judgments were
delivered :-
TEW, c.J. SIERRA LEONE.
This is an appeal from a
decision of the Chief Justice
discharging a rule nisi obtained
on behalf of one Kpakpa Dogah
for the issue of a writ of
Habeas Corpus directed to the
Awoame Fia Togbi Sri II,
President of the Highest Native
Tribunal of Awuna and to the
keeper of the Prison of the said
Tribunal.
It appears that the applicant
had in 1921 successfully sued
one Fiagbenu Kwasinye before the
Native Tribunal of Fia ASfen II
of Mafi to recover posses<-iOT'
of a piece of land. Kwasinye
appea led to the Highest Native
Tribunal of Awuna which reversed
the judgment of the firs'.
Tribunal. The Provincial
Commissioner dismissed an appeal
from this" latter decision, but
the Fun Court set aside his
judgment on the ground that the
Native Tribunal of Awuna had not
at all time~ during the hearing
been properly constituted.
Kwasinye then applied to the
Awuna Tribunal to rehear his
appeal from the Mafi Tribunal,
and eventually that Tribunal
gave judgment in his favour with
costs taxed at £79 18~. 6d.
Kpakpa Dogah appealed to the
Provincial Commissioner, but
failed to comply with the
conditions imposed and his
appeal was ~truck out.
On the 11th of February, 1930,
the Awuna Tribunal issued a writ
of ca. sa. to enforce payment of
the costs, and this writ was
executed on the 21st of
November, 1930, when
Kpakpa Dogah was arrested and
imprisoned for thref mOflths.
The question which the learned
Chief Justice had to decide when
cause wa~ shown by the President
of the Awuna Tribunal and the
Keeper of the Prison was whether
the Tribunal had jurisdiction to
issue the ca. sa. He decided
that they had jurisdiction.
When the appeal from this
decision came before this Court
Counsel for the respondent, who
is the execution creditor,
raised two preliminary
objections. First he argued that
the appeal was not properly
before the Court.
The appellant had obtained
conditional leave to appeal from
this Court (being out of time
for obtaining leave from the
Court below) on condition (inter
alia) that he should give notice
to all parties directly affected
by the appeal. He subsequently
came before a single judge of
this Court and was granted an
extension of time for fulfilling
the conditions. The present
respondent (Charles M. Fiagbenu)
had previously been substituted
for Fiagbenu Kwasinye in
circumstances which are not
apparent from the record. The
appellant gave notice to Charles
Fiagbenu and obtained final
leave to appeal from the same
judge.
It is dear that the appellant
did not in fact comply with the
conditions imposed by this Court
in that he neglected to give
notice to the only two persons
who were directly affected by
the appeal, namely, the
President of the Tribunal and
the Keeper of the Prison. I t
does not follow that his appeal
must fail on that ground. To
adopt the language of the Privy
Council in Kojo Pon v. Atta
Fua (P.C. 1874-1928) at page
98, to refuse to hear this
appeal on the ground of a mere
technicality would be to fail to
do justice as between the
parties The failure would be
even more serious in a case of
this kind where in ordinary
circumstances the liberty of the
Appellant would be at stake. But
for a second and more vital
objection to which I am about to
refer, the proper course for
this Court to adopt would be to
give the appellant time to give
notice to the proper parties and
to adjourn the hearing of the
appeal for that purpose.
The second point taken by the
respondent was that the
appellant being now at liberty,
there is, so to speak, no virtue
in this appeal. It is admitted
that the appellant is no longer
detained and it appears from an
affidavit on the record that he
was released after a month,
presumably because he paid the
amount of the costs. In these
circumstances what effective
order could this Court make,
assuming that it considered that
the learned Chief justice was
wrong in refusing to issue the
writ? The sole object of a writ
of Habeas Corpus is to secure
the release of a person who is
unlawfully detained. Where an
applicant is not detained, it
obviously cannot issue, and it
would be an absurdity to listen
to arguments of a purely
academic nature based on a state
of things which does not in fact
exist.
That an appeal of this kind
could not lie where the
appellant whose release
ostensibly is sought is at
liberty seems to me a self
evident proposition which needs
no authority to support it, and
one would hardly except to find
any. There is. however, a
Circadian case Fraser v.
Tupper, cited in the English
and Empire Digest, Vol. 16, page
271, rote f., which is exactly
in point and decides. to quote
the language of the note, that "
an appeal will not lie in any
case of proceedings for or upon
a writ of Habeas Corpus when at
the time of bringing the appeal
appellant is at large."
It is abundantly clear that in the
present case these proceedings
were brought not with the genuine
object of testing the validity of
the commitment of the appellant,
but a~ an indirect method of
appealing against the decision of
the Awuna Tribunal. From that
decision an appeal Jay to the
Provincial Commissioner, and
it was only through his own
failure to fulfil the conditions
imposed that the appellant
was unable to prosecute the
appeal. If this had been a genuine
application intended only to
secure the release of the
applicant from an UP lawful
detention, he could at once, when
the application was refused by the
learned Chief Justice, have
renewed it before every Judge of
the Supreme Court in turn :
See Eshugbayi Eleko v. Officer
Administering the Government of
Nigeria and another,
(1928)
A.C. 459.
It cannot be too clearly
emphasised that procedure by way
of Habeas Corpus was never
intended to be, and should not be
used for any such indirect
purpose.
This appeal is dismissed with
costs assessed at £19 15s. The
Court below to carry out.
MICHELIN,
J.
I
concur.
SA WREY -COOKSON, J.
I
concur. |