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COURT CANNOT TAKE JUDICIAL NOTICE OF A NULLIFIED JUDGEMENT NOT PRODUCED BEFORE IT

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Whether the record and contents of a nullified judgment ought formally be produced in court or extract thereof be placed before the court before the opinions expressed therein could be countenanced; or whether the Court of Appeal could have taken notice of their existence and contents by the mere fact that the nullified judgment was probably in the archives of the court. In Attorney-General v. Silem L.R. 10 H.L. Cas. 704, it was held that S.26 of the Queens Remembrance Act, 1859, which empowered the Barons of Exchequer to frame rules for making “the process, practice and mode of pleading” on the revenue side of the court uniform with that of the plea side, did not give the Judges the power of entertaining appeals on revenue cases, as they assumed. It is always necessary to exercise powers conferred by an enabling statute within the four comers of the statute: see Australian cases of Tavcar v. Tavcar (1950) A.L.R. 260; White v. White (1947) A.L.R. 342. It therefore appears to me that the power, conferred by S.73(1) of the Evidence Act, for a court to take judicial notice of its course of proceedings and rules of practice cannot rightly be invoked to take judicial notice of the contents of a nullified judgment, which the members had not earlier had an opportunity of seeing. For, true, it existed as a fact, being devoid of any legal consequences, it was then like any other opinion, say, in a textbook. I do not think that anybody can suggest that such a textbook opinion should be judicially noticed.

— P. Nnaemeka-Agu JSC. Gbaniyi Osafile v. Paul Odi (SC 149/1987, 4th day of May 1990)

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ARBITRAL AWARDS HAVE SAME FORCE AS A JUDGEMENT OF A COURT

Onwu v. Nka (1996) 7 NWLR (Pt.458) 1 at 17 paragraph E, where the Supreme Court, per Iguh JSC. had this to say: “The law is well settled that where disputes or matters in difference between two or more parties are by consent of the disputants submitted to a domestic forum inclusive of arbitrators or a body of persons who may be invested with judicial authority to hear and determine such disputes and matters for investigation in accordance with customary law and general usages, and a decision is duly given, it is as conclusive and unimpeachable (unless and until set aside on any of the recognized grounds) as the decision of any constituted court of the land, such a decision is consequently binding on the parties and the courts in appropriate cases will enforce it.”

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WRITING OF JUDGEMENT IS A MATTER OF STYLE OF THE JUDGE

One major and central complaint of counsel is in respect of the way the learned trial Judge wrote his judgment vis-à-vis his evaluation of the totality of the evidence before him. While I agree that a judgment should have certain vital features and characteristics, I do not believe that a trial Judge must be regimented to a strictly laid down pattern beyond which he can only go on pain of punishment by way of setting his judgment aside on appeal. A trial Judge is not a child in a kindergarten class who must be led by the nose and the hands to write or recite a rhyme in unison or in union to the strictest details of the words and the letters and the punctuation marks. It should not be so. A trial Judge, the highly respected professional that he is should be given some freedom in the method of writing his own judgment. After all, writing of judgment is a matter of the personal style of the individual Judge. A Judge can develop his own “house” style and as long as that style is not outrageous, an appellate court cannot raise its eyebrows. Although it is neater to follow some generally set down pattern and methodology in the judgment writing process, an appellate court, in my humble view, is not competent to throw out a judgment of a trial Judge merely because it failed to follow the set down procedure. What an appellate court should be interested in, is whether from the entire judgment, justice has been done to the parties and in considering this package of justice, an appellate court should not be myopically interested in pockets of irregularities in the judgment but the totality of it all. I should perhaps go further to make the point that once the trial Judge has been able to bring out clearly the issues for determination, the case of the parties adequately summarised without any detestable embellishments, the argument of counsel and a careful and unbiased evaluation of the evidence, a judgment should not be subjected to an appellate attack to the extent that it must be thrown out.

— Tobi, JCA. Abraham v Olorunfunmi (1990) – CA/L/83/89

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EXECUTORY JUDGEMENT VS DECLARATORY JUDGEMENT

Executory judgment declares the respective rights of the parties and then proceeds to order the defendant to act in a particular way. e.g. to pay damages or refrain from interfering with the plaintiffs’ rights, such order being enforceable by execution if disobeyed. Declaratory judgments, on the other hand, merely proclaim the existence of a legal relationship and do not contain any order which may be enforced against the defendant. Second: A declaratory judgment may be the ground of subsequent proceedings in which the right, having been violated, receives enforcement but in the meantime there is no enforcement or any claim to it … A declaratory judgment is complete in itself since the relief is the declaration. See Vol. 1 Halbury Laws, 4th Ed., para. 185 187; Akunnia v. Attorney General of Anambra State (1977) 5 S.C. (161 at 177).

— Agbaje JSC. Okoya & Ors. V. S. Santilli & Ors. ( SC.206/1989, 23 MAR 1990)

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NOT EVERY ERROR IN A JUDGEMENT WILL VITIATE IT

It is not every mistake or error in a judgment or decision that could vitiate such a decision as the mistake has to be shown to have led to a miscarriage of justice or materially or substantially affected the decision making to have such impact. See Owhonda v Ekpechi (2003) 9-10 SC 1 at 21; Mrs. Jumbo v R. S. H. P. A. D. A. (2005) 5 SC (Pt.11) 102 at 112. — M.U. Peter-Odili, JSC. Kwara Judicial Commission v Tolani (2019) – SC.63/2010

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CONSEQUENTIAL ORDER GIVES EFFECT TO A JUDGEMENT

A consequential order is an order founded on the claim of the successful party. In other words, a consequential order is one which is not merely incidental to a decision properly made, but one which is merely to give effect to that decision. – Karibe-Whyte JSC. Awoniyi v. AMORC (2000)

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TRIAL COURT HAS POWER TO ENFORCE ITS OWN JUDGEMENT

The judgment subsists and remains binding on the parties until set aside; and it took immediate effect from the date it was pronounced. Section 287(3) of the Constitution enjoins the said trial Court to enforce its own judgment.

— Ejembi Eko, JSC. Oboh & Anor v. NFL (SC.841/2016, January 28, 2022)

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