Enyinnaya Dick V. Our And Oil Company Limited (2018)

LAWGLOBAL HUB Lead Judgment Report

OLABODE RHODES-VIVOUR, J.S.C.

The appellant entered an appeal against the Ruling of the Court of Appeal (Port Harcourt Division) given on 19 February 2009 whereby the respondent’s application for:

(i) Leave for the appellant to compile and file supplementary record to this appeal consisting of the original notice and grounds of appeal which was omitted from the records of the lower Court transmitted to this Honourable Court.

(ii) Deeming as duly filed and served the supplementary record of appeal exhibited herewith and marked Exhibit A.

(iii) Leave for the appellant to file and argue four (4) additional grounds of appeal.

(iv) An order deeming the additional grounds of appeal exhibited to the affidavit in support of this motion as Exhibit B as duly filed and served, the appropriate filing fees having been paid.

(v) Leave for the appellant to file an amended appellant’s brief of argument.

was granted by the Court of Appeal. For clarity I must explain that at the trial Court the respondent was the plaintiff. He lost. At the Court of Appeal he was the appellant, while

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the appellant was the respondent. He filed his Notice of appeal on 22 May, 2001 at the registry of the trial Court. The Record of Appeal was compiled and transmitted to the Court of Appeal, but surprisingly the Notice of Appeal was not in the Record of Appeal. That explains why the respondent brought his Notice of Motion in the Court of Appeal to file a supplementary or additional record of appeal which contains the Notice of appeal omitted or left out from the Record of Appeal already before the Court of Appeal. The respondent, as appellant won at the Court of Appeal. So he is the respondent in this Court. The concluding part of the Ruling reads:

In the final result, for all the reasons set out earlier, I answer the two questions I posed at the beginning of this ruling in the affirmative. The Court has the discretionary judicial power to grant the reliefs sought and that it is proper and even expedient to grant the application as prayed in the circumstances of the case. The application is granted in the following terms:-

(a) Leave is granted the applicant to compile and file a copy of the Notice of Appeal filed on 22 May, 2001 as

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record of this appeal.