HIGH COURT, CAPE COAST
Date: 4 JUNE 1975
BAIDOO J
NATURE OF PROCEEDINGS
Appeal by a tenant from an order for payment of rent arrears. The facts are set out in the judgment.
COUNSEL
Ampiah (for Hammond) for the plaintiff.
Sackeyfio for the defendant.
JUDGMENT OF BAIDOO J.
The plaintiff-respondent sued the defendant-appellant in the Akim Manso District Court grade II claiming 0388.00 as arrears of rent from November 1969 to November 1973, in respect of one room rented by the defendant in his house at Atiankam-Nkwanta. The plaintiff-respondent will hereafter be referred to simply as the plaintiff, and the defendant-appellant simply as the defendant. The rent payable was 08.00 per month and according to the plaintiff, the defendant who took possession of the room in September 1969, paid rents for only two and a half months and no more.
The defendant denied liability and testified that he was paying the monthly rent regularly until about two months before the action when the plaintiff decided to increase the rent to 09.00 a month so he refused to pay the increased amount and moved out from the plaintiff s premises. The defendant’s first witness, a son of the defendant, gave evidence of a number of occasions when the plaintiff received from the defendant rent in advance. He talked of an occasion when the plaintiff collected from the defendant as much as 032.00 as advance against rents and other occasions when further advances of 024.00, 016.00 and other payments were received by the plaintiff who eventually increased the rent to 09.00 which the defendant refused to pay and therefore vacated the room.
Both the defendant and the defendant’s first witness emphasised that according to his normal practice the plaintiff never issued any receipt for any rent paid to him.
In his attempt to resolve the conflict in the evidence adduced by the parties, the trial magistrate failed to advert his mind to the relevant provisions under the Rent Act, 1963 (Act 220). Under section 20 of the Act a landlord is mandatorily required to issue to his tenant a rent card. Under section 34 of the Rent Regulations, 1964 (L.I. 369), every rent card must disclose certain specified particulars such as the rent payable every month, every rent paid each month, the date of payment and the arrears of rent, if any. These particulars must be filled up at the reverse side of the rent card and signed by the landlord or his agent whenever any rent is paid.
[p.465] of [1975] 2 GLR 463
Having failed to provide the defendant with a rent card disclosing these requisite particulars the plaintiff deprived himself of this vital documentary evidence. The trial magistrate gave judgment for the plaintiff for the main reason that it was for the tenant to have produced receipts proving he had paid his rents up to date. Under the provisions of the Rent Act the responsibility of providing a rent card recording payment of every rent falls on the landlord, and in my view the doubt created by the conflicting evidence adduced by the parties must be resolved in favour of the tenant. Personally I find it difficult to believe that a landlord will patiently wait for four years before taking to court a monthly tenant perennially in arrears.
I hold therefore that the plaintiff failed to adduce sufficient evidence establishing his case. I therefore allow the appeal and hereby set aside the judgment of the court below. Costs to the defendant in this court fixed at 040.00 inclusive and in the court below at 020.00 against the plaintiff . Court below to carry out.
DECISION
Order accordingly.
