Compulaw - 1st Indigenous Digital Law Library

Brief

Carriage of goods by sea
Customs duty and Bill of entry
Bill of lading
Section 299 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015

Facts

The plaintiff/respondent by paragraph 19 of its Amended Statement of Claim claimed as follows:

19
Wherefore the plaintiff claims against the defendant the sum of N116,489.61 (One hundred and sixteen thousand four hundred and eighty nine naira sixty one Kobo) plus interest at 9 per cent and bank charges until the date of judgement and interest at 4 per cent after judgement until the debt is liquidated being balance of his debt to the plaintiff as per defendant's statement of account with the plaintiff.

In order to enable the defendant clear the goods in the absence of the shipping documents an indemnity contract was executed between the plaintiff bank, the defendant (trading under the name and style of Emeka Ogwuru and Partners) and Nigermanship Agencies Ltd The Nigerian Far East Line (a shipping company based in Lagos). The indemnity contract was admitted in evidence and marked Exhibit A Furthermore, under the indemnity the plaintiff undertook to indemnify the shipping company (i.e. the Nigeria Far East Line) against all liability arising from or relating to the delivery of the said goods to the defendant. It was plaintiff's case that the said goods were delivered to the defendant through his clearing agents, the Deliks Enterprises (Nig) Ltd at the defendant's written request, while on the contrary the main thrust of defendant's case was that his said agent, according to him, did not clear the goods because they could not be found in the customs shed. In the meantime, and consequent to the execution of Exhibit A defendant was debited with the sum of N56,410.25 which was the local equivalent of the value of the goods which the plaintiff paid the aforesaid owners of the goods through their bankers, namely, the Midland Bank (Liverpool) demanded payment which was settled by plaintiff.

The payment of the said value of the goods was duly acknowledged by a document which was also tendered in evidence. The plaintiff sought to claim the equivalence of money paid on defendant's behalf from Central Bank but the latter refused to approve same because of defendants refusal to sign the Bill of lading, tendered and marked Exhibit B. The defendant, during counsel's submission further denied liability contending that failure to obtain approval from Central Bank before the alleged payment made by the plaintiff on his behalf was illegal. At the conclusion of trial, the learned trial Judge made a finding that the goods were received by the defendant and accordingly entered judgement in favour of the plaintiff against the defendant for the sum of N56,410.25. The court refused to award the interest as claimed by plaintiff but awarded interest at 5% on the judgement debt, with effect from the date of judgement.

It is against this judgement that the defendant has appealed.

Ogwuru V. Co-op Bank (1994) CLR 12(b) (CA)

Brief

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Issues