HIGH COURT RESTRAINS SHELL

AN Accra Fast Track High Court has restrained Shell Ghana Limited from terminating the dealership agreement between the company and 17 of its dealers in Kumasi and Accra.
According to the court, once evidence had not been taken in the substantive case, any termination of the agreement would be an exercise in futility.
It, therefore, upheld a motion for interlocutory injunction filed by the plaintiffs against Shell and adjourned the matter sine die.
The court, however, ordered the dealers to make an undertaken within two weeks to pay substantial compensation to Shell if they lost the case.
The dealers sued Shell to seek an order to annul the termination of their dealership agreement which the company said took effect from December 31, 2007.
They described the exercise as null, void, inequitable and unconscionable because they had not been given reasonable notices.
They are further seeking an order to set aside the purported notice of termination or intention not to renew their dealership on the grounds that the notices were unreasonably short, unconscionable, unfair and unlawful.
The court could not hear the motion for injunction last Friday because of procedural problems and, therefore, awarded costs of GH¢200 against Shell and adjourned the matter to yesterday.
The plaintiffs are Godfrey Motey Addo, Esther Mullings, Rebecca Tagoe, Thompson Obimpeh, Osei Bonsu, Ambrose Kumassah, Benjamin Boateng, De-Kuza Akuetey, Titus Owens-Dey, George Russel Teye, Lucy Osafo Agyekum, Emmanuel Inkoom and Samuel Aidoo, all of Accra.
The rest are Robert Osei Bonsu, Richard Puni, Emmanuel Kwasi Donkor and Justice Acheampong, all of Kumasi.
Arguing the motion, counsel for the plaintiffs, Mr S.K. Amoah, said the dealers had worked for Shell variously for periods ranging between one and 30 years and that the last dealership agreement executed between them and Shell was in 2005, which expired in December of that year.
According to him, the plaintiffs had been operating their respective dealerships without any formal agreement since the expiration of the agreement.
He said there was no evidence of renewal of the agreement but the plaintiffs continued to operate in that capacity after an oral agreement between the parties.
Following that arrangement, counsel said the court ought to restrain the defendant because where revocation was without reasonable notice, the court had always restrained.
The plaintiffs, counsel said, had invested huge sums of money in their businesses involving Shell and non-Shell products, equipment and other materials in order to maintain the business of the defendant.
Mr Amoah said the nature and requirements of Shell’s business compelled his clients to rely on loans from their banks to enable them to execute the dealership agreement for the benefit of the defendant company.
He said the agreement between his clients and Shell was not a contract of service, for which reason they had a right to be protected by the injunction.
He said the plaintiffs would incur heavy losses resulting from their inability to dispose of the non-Shell products within the short time that the notice was given and, therefore, the defendant should be restrained, since the company would not suffer any hardship or inconvenience.
Mr Daniel Amarteifio, counsel for Shell, even though opposed the motion and urged the court not to entertain it, admitted that the last agreement between the parties expired in December 2005.
He said no new agreement was executed but the parties continued to regulate their relationship according to the terms of the expired agreement.
Counsel asked the court not to grant the motion because once the plaintiffs had quantified the losses in monetary value, they could be compensated for any losses.
According to him, to ask for reasonable notice amounted to varying the terms of the agreement, adding that so long as the parties continued to regulate their activities, as was contained in the expired agreement, it meant there was a contract between them, the expiration of which could not be enforced in the court.
Mr Amarteifio said a contract of service could not be retrained by an injunction.