First In Time, Last In Reasoning: Prior Equities, Execution Creditors and The Unregistered Mortgage in BANK OF AFRICA LTD V GRACEFIELD MERCHANTS LTD [TLP-SC-2020-05]

the case did not require the Court to excuse the second claimant’s failure to search, or to rest its decision on the happy accident that the register was empty. It required only the application of rules that Ghanaian law has long accepted: that equities rank in order of creation, that a purchaser under a specifically enforceable contract is the owner in equity, that registration defers legal effect without destroying equitable rights, and that an execution creditor takes the debtor’s property subject to the equities that bind it. Those rules gave the second claimant a stronger answer than the one the Court gave him. They also put the burden of proof where it belongs, on the party that came later.