Appellant trading under the name and style of Rocky Merchants entered into a contract for the supply of 10,000 metric tons of cement from a Swiss Company, ASDECAMO. He approached and contracted with the respondent bank to open a letter of credit for the transaction in favour of ASDECAMO. The letter of credit, for the sum of $570,000, was to be irrevocable and confirmed, and was to be made available to a Swiss bank(the respondent’s correspondent in Switzerland) which was to pay ASDECAMO, once the letter of credit was accompanied by some specified documents including a full set of ‘clean on board’ Bill of Lading. There was an indemnity/exclusionary clause in the appellant’s application for the letter of credit, to absolve the respondent’s bank and their corresponding bank in Switzerland from any liability or “responsibility as to the documents, beyond seeing that they purport to be in order.” The bill of lading, however, was not signed by ASDECAMO but by another party. On presentation of the bill of lading and the other specified documents, ASDECAMO was paid $570,000.

Appellant however did not receive any cement as no cement was shipped. There was no vessel by the name inserted in the bill of lading or the ship that carried the cement. In fact, the whole transaction was a fraud on the appellant. Despite this, the appellants collected the shipping documents from the respondent bank and instructed them to debit their account. The appellant thereafter commenced this action for breach of contract by the respondent and its Swiss bank correspondent for, inter alia, wrongful payment on a letter of credit made by them (i.e. appellants) contrary to the terms and conditions of the said letter of credit. The learned trial judge dismissed the appellant’s claim and the appellant thus appealed to the Court of Appeal, who also dismissed the appeal, but held by a majority judgment that the High Court had no jurisdiction to try the matter as it was an admiralty matter. The appellant thereupon further appealed to the Supreme Court.

Respondents Counsel applied for an enlargement of time within which to file notice of appeal against the Court of Appeal’s ruling on jurisdiction. A problem however arose here as to whether the decision of the Court of Appeal was a final order or an interlocutory order, as this would affect the issue whether the respondent’s notice of appeal was filed within time or not. If the majority decision was a final decision within the meaning of that expression in S.31 (2) of the Supreme Court Act 1960 then the notice filed by the counsel for the respondent (within the three months period) would have been within time, but would have been filed out of time if the decision were interlocutory (as it was filed more than 14days after the decision).