BASIC RULES/PRINCIPLES FOR INTERPRETING NON-STATUTORY DOCUMENTS (Full Lecture)

BASIC RULES/PRINCIPLES FOR INTERPRETING NON-STATUTORY DOCUMENTS (Full Lecture) | Law of Interpretation | Ghana Pre-Bar Justice Dr Ernest Owusu-Dapaa JA, Justice of the Court of Appeal of Ghana, takes Pre-Bar students through the basic rules and principles Ghanaian courts apply when they interpret a deed, a contract, a lease, a will or any other non-statutory document. The lecture is built on the leading Ghanaian authorities, with facts, issues, holdings and the judges' own words. WHAT THE LECTURE COVERS Part A: Foundations • What is a document? What is a deed? Owusu-Asiedu v Adomako and the common-law meaning of a deed • Formalities for land under the Land Act, 2020 (Act 1036), ss 34-36, and how the Supreme Court has treated them • The underlying principle: intention is the soul of the instrument (animus hominis est anima scripti) Rule 1: Read the document as a whole • Every clause is compared with the others and one entire sense made of them • Manu v Emeruwa: pledge or mortgage? Substance over form where the parties are illiterate • Boateng v Volta Aluminium Co Ltd: the four termination clauses read together, and why expressio unius est exclusio alterius is "a valuable servant but a dangerous master" • Biney v Biney: the whole-document rule applied to a family deed of gift Rule 2: The construction must be as near to the mind and intention of the maker as the law permits • The three senses of "intention", and why the court seeks the intention expressed in the document, not the one the maker kept to himself Rule 3: The intention must be gathered from the written instrument • Prempeh v Agyepong (SC): can a failed statutory will be saved as a samansiw? "You simply cannot interpret a customary will in accordance with English law" • Allan Sugar v Ghana Export Co: parties who reduce their agreement to writing are bound by the written word; negotiations are inadmissible; the court will not rewrite the bargain Rule 4: Context and the ordinary meaning • Impraim v Baffoe: "family house", inclusio unius, and why "children" was read to include remoter issue • Addai v Donkor: "surviving children" in a lawyer-drafted will Rule 5: Technical and scientific meaning • When technical, scientific or trade words keep that meaning Rule 6: Secondary meaning and the avoidance of absurdity • The golden rule from Grey v Pearson and Maxwell's statement of the secondary meaning • In re Amarteifio: "Lawyers are not infallible." Why £20 of the rent meant twenty per cent, and how the will as a whole revealed the testator's intention Rule 7: The power to correct mistakes • Wilson v Wilson and the correction of an obvious mistake on the face of the instrument • Wilberforce: a mistaken description, and the limits of the power Closing • How the rules work together; interpreting foreign law in Ghana; Part A summary WHO THIS IS FOR Ghana School of Law Pre-Bar students AND POST-CALL as well as Part 2 students,, LLB students studying the Law of Interpretation, practitioners who draft and litigate documents, and anyone who wants to understand how a Ghanaian court decides what a document means. HOW TO USE THIS LECTURE Pause at each case and write the facts, issue and holding in your own words before the lecture gives them to you. Learn the quotations: examiners reward students who state a rule in the words of the court that laid it down. Note where the rules pull in different directions, for example Boateng v VALCO (implying a term to harmonise the clauses) against Allan Sugar (no rewriting of the bargain), and be ready to reconcile them. PRINCIPAL AUTHORITIES DISCUSSED Biney v Biney [1974] 1 GLR 318 (CA); Manu v Emeruwa [1971] 1 GLR 442; Boateng v Volta Aluminium Co Ltd [1984-86] GLRD 85 (CA); Prempeh v Agyepong [1993-94] 1 GLR 225 (SC); Allan Sugar (Products) Ltd v Ghana Export Co Ltd [1982-83] GLR 922 (CA); Impraim v Baffoe [1980] GLR 520; Addai v Donkor (SC, 1992); In re Amarteifio (Decd) [1982-83] GLR 1137; Owusu-Asiedu v Adomako; Wilson v Wilson; Grey v Pearson (1857) 10 ER 1216; Prenn v Simmonds [1971] 3 All ER 237 (HL); Land Act, 2020 (Act 1036); Courts Act, 1971 (Act 372), s 49. This video is for legal education only and is not legal advice. Subscribe to Ghana Law TV and turn on notifications for the next session, on the construction of wills under the Wills Act, 1971 (Act 360), and for the lectures on statutory interpretation that follow. #GhanaLaw #LawOfInterpretation #PreBar #GhanaSchoolOfLaw #ConstructionOfDocuments #Deeds #Contracts #Wills #BineyvBiney #BoatengvVALCO #GhanaLawTV #LegalEducation #CourtOfAppealGhana