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PROPER EVALUATION OF FACT NEEDS NO INTERFERENCE FROM APPELLATE COURT

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Dictum

The law is also common knowledge that where a trial Court fails to properly discharge that primary duty or the evaluation value ascribed to and inference/findings made thereon cannot be supported by the evidence adduced before that Court, then an appellate Court is entitled to intervene and interfere with such decisions of the trial Court … However where a trial Court has unquestionably and properly evaluated the evidence adduced before it, an appellate Court has no business to and is usually slow in interfering with decisions arising from such an exercise.

– M.L. Garba JCA. Odogwu v. Vivian (2009) – CA/PH/345/05

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DISTURBED FINDING OF FACT

The trite position of the law is that where the Court of Appeal wrongly disturbed any finding of fact of a trial court, the Supreme Court will not hesitate in restoring that finding, See: Board of Customs and Excise v. Barau (1987) 10 SC 48.

— T. Muhammad, JSC. VAB Petroleum v. Momah (2013) – SC.99/2004

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ONLY PERVERSENESS CAN SET ASIDE LOWER COURT’S FINDINGS

Learned respondent/cross appellant’s counsel is right in his submission that a finding of a lower court on appeal is only set-aside where same is perverse. In a seemingly endless number of the decisions of this court, it has been held that a decision of a court is perverse when it ignores the facts or evidence before it which lapse when considered as a whole constitutes a miscarriage of justice. In such a case an appellate court is bound to interfere with such a decision and set it aside.

– Dattijo Muhammad JSC. Union Bank v. Chimaeze (2014)

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WHERE APPELLATE COURT WILL SET ASIDE FINDINGS OF TRIAL COURT

It is trite law that an appellate court will not ordinarily interfere with the findings of fact of a trial court except in circumstances such as where the trial court has not made a proper use of the opportunity of seeing and hearing the witnesses or where it has drawn wrong conclusions from accepted credible evidence or has taken an erroneous view of the evidence adduced before it or its findings of fact are perverse and do not flow from the evidence accepted by it.

– Iguh, JSC. Oshatoba v. Olujitan (2000)

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WAYS BY WHICH FACTS ARE PROVED IN COURT

Now, a court in the determination of a matter before it enquires into and relies on the relevant facts led by parties before it, draws inferences from such facts and the arguments canvassed by the parties or their counsel. Judicial evidence is the means by which the facts relied upon in taking decisions are proved. Facts are proved by oral testimony of the persons who perceived them, by the production of documents and inspections of things or places. Facts can also be proved by admissions, confessions, judicial notice, presumptions and estoppel. A Judge is free to take Judicial notice of all such facts he is either called upon to or from his general knowledge of such facts or from enquiries made by him on such facts from sources to which it is proper for him to refer.

– M.D. Muhammad, J.C.A. Shona-Jason v Omega Air (2005) – CA/L/418/2000

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APPEAL ON FINDING OF FACT REQUIRES LEAVE OF COURT

The above finding complained of being a finding of fact, it is settled law that for the appellants to successfully appeal against the finding, they must first of all obtain the leave of either the lower court or of this court. It would have been otherwise if the complaint was purely a complaint of error in law. It is clear from the record that appellants never obtained the leave of either the lower court or of this court to appeal on the facts so ground 1 of the grounds of appeal in so far as it is a complaint against the findings of facts is incompetent and is consequently liable to be struck out.

– WS Onnoghen, JSC. Calabar CC v. Ekpo (2008)

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