       J U D G M E N T 
 2  
The Plaintiff’s case is simple. It alleges that the defendant directed it to supply fuel to its contractor called Safco Engineering Ltd in return for payment. It duly made supplies of fuel to Safco Engineering but unfortunately, the defendant has failed or refused to pay for supplies made in the month of month of May 2006 amounting to 107,225,130 cedis being the price of 13,947 litres of diesel. The defendant’s ground for failure to pay for that particular supply of fuel is that by its arrangements with plaintiff, plaintiff was only entitled to payments for supplies supported by claim forms submitted by Safco Engineering. It argued that the claim forms for May 2006 were not supported by a covering letter from Safco and were presented directly to them by plaintiffs, contrary to the laid down procedure. It therefore denied that the 13,947 litres of diesel was supplied to Safco for the defendant’s project.   
I found it very strange that this matter was not settled at the pretrial conference because it seemed to me to be a simple matter of determining whether or not Safco Engineering received the fuel in May and whether that fuel was provided on the accounts of the defendant. Somehow, the parties allowed the court to conduct a trial on the matter. At trial, the plaintiff proved laboriously with its records and showed that it indeed supply Safco Engineering with fuel in May and this was done as part of the directions it had received from the defendants.   
When the defendant presented its defence, it called a key witness, Thomas Goka. He is an accountant with Safco and the person who coordinated all the records on supplies of fuel made before and after May 2006 and generally submitted the claim forms to defendant. His evidence served to corroborate that 
 3
of the plaintiff. He confirmed that Safco Engineering had been supplied with the fuel in May but Safco had not presented the claim forms themselves because ‘a letter (dated 7th June 2006) came from TDC that from that time, suppliers should submit their claim forms directly and not through our company’. With that clear directive from defendant, he requested plaintiffs to send their claims to defendant, which they did.   
What this means is that defendant’s complaint that it did not receive claim form from Safco was a result of its own directive. And it could have easily determined that the fuel had indeed been supplied if it had gone through Safco’s records with them. Indeed, Safco is still supposed to be doing jobs for the defendant through other subcontractors. And after giving those directives, it turned round to refuse to pay for the fuel supplied and caused a trial at which its liability was settled by its own witness. If the situation had not caused loss to the plaintiff, and been an abuse of this court’s functions, it would be comic. Be that as it may, this court is satisfied that plaintiff’s claims have been corroborated by its evidence and defendant’s witness.  Judgment is entered in favor of plaintiff in the sum of 10,722.51 cedis with interest thereon at prevailing commercial rate from May 2006 to date of payment. Costs of GH¢6,000.    
                        (SGD) MRS. GERTRUDE TORKORNOO (JUSTICE OF THE HIGH COURT)  