J. SAYOU GLAPOH, Appellant, v. BOLADO SAWMILLING COMPANY, by and through its manager, LORENZO BOLADO, Appellee.

APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE NINTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT, BONG COUNTY. Argued October 15, 1969. Decided January 29, 1970. 1. Injunctive relief is granted on equitable considerations which are assessed within the broad discretionary powers given to the court in such cases, subject to appellate reversal when discretion has been palpably abused. 2. An injunction may not issue when title to land forming the basis of the action has not been finally determined. 3. A trial court may dissolve a writ of injunction upon its own initiative after termination of pleadings, without a motion made therefor. 4. The trial judge is empowered, after issuance of a preliminary injunction, to subsequently modify or suspend it before the final hearing. 5. The preliminary writ should only issue from the trial court when it has been clearly evidenced by the petitioner that immediate and irreparable injury will result to him during the interval before the final hearing. 6. A preliminary injunction cannot be made final until after the respondent appears to show cause why the injunction should not be made permanent 7. Since under provisions of L. 1963-64, ch. III, Civil Procedure Law, � 5177, the Supreme Court may modify any judgment of a lower court, and realizing that continued tree cutting may diminish the value of the land at issue, the Supreme Court, though affirming the judgment of the lower court, may modify the judgment to the extent of restraining the respondent from further tree cutting pending the final determination of title to the property claimed by both parties in the untried ejectment suit. 8. The judge of a trial court is the master of his own record in a proceeding. An injunction suit was instituted to restrain the appellee sawmilling company from its timber harvesting on the ioo acres claimed by appellant as his and disputed by the company, which also claimed title to the same tract. Subsequent to the suit for injunctive relief, the petitioner in that proceeding began an action in ejectment, which remained untried to the time of this opinion. After the preliminary writ of injunction had been issued, the respondent company moved for dissolution of the restraining order. In the absence of the petitioner, who had opposed the motion, the court set bond and permitted 451 452 LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS the company to continue operations pending final determination of the motion to dissolve the writ, which was, thereafter, vacated by the trial court after a hearing. The petitioner appealed from both aspects of the lower court’s conduct and decree. The judgment was affirmed, with the modification that until title to the acreage at issue was finally determined in the ejectment suit, the company was to refrain from its timber harvesting on the tract claimed by the appellant. lant. Stephen Dunbar and S. Raymond Horace for appelPeter ‘linos George for appellee. MR. JUSTICE MITCHELL delivered the opinion of the court. On February 9, 1968, J. Sayou Glapoh, petitioner, filed an action of injunction against Bolado Sawmilling Company, in the Circuit Court of the Ninth Judicial Circuit, Bong County, sitting in its Equity Division. The complaint averred that the petitioner was the owner of one hundred acres of land, situated, lying and being on the western side of the Gonota Nyaniquellie Road, Nyanborquellie Chiefdom, as can more clearly be seen from the copy of his deed made profert and marked exhibit “A,” and that he was entitled to the title, enjoyment, use, possession and occupancy of the said tract of land. That notwithstanding his long ownership and possession of the said premises, and also the improvements he had made thereon, respondent had deliberately and without color of right, entered upon and was using the said property to its own benefit, thereby depriving petitioner of the use and enjoyment of his property. In its answer, the respondent categorically denied operating on any land owned and possessed by the petitioner, but that they operated on a parcel of land owned by the late Joel Tolbert which they did by permission of the co- LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS 453 administrators of the estate of Joel Tolbert, and there was no encroachment made on any land owned by the petitioner. In support of this allegation made by the respondent in its answer, there is in the records a letter from one Henry G. Grimes, Geodetic Engineer, Public Land Surveyor, Bong County, R.L., which said, among other things that he had made a resurvey of the Tolbert estate’s realty situated in the area of the Bolado Sawmilling Concession and occupied by it, and that he had found that Tolbert’s area made no encroachment on Glapoh’s area whatsoever. After respondent filed its answer, it moved the court for dissolution of the injunction and to grant bail so that the operations of the company would not grind to a halt on the writ of injunction since title had not been determined by the court. Immediately thereafter petitioner filed a bill of information, informing the court below that respondent had wantonly violated the writ of injunction, because notwithstanding that it enjoined, restrained and prohibited the company and all persons directly or indirectly engaged in its operations, work had continued. The court heard argument, dissolved the injunction and granted bail so that the company could continue operations pending the determination of the ejectment suit now before the said court, which would determine title. The plaintiff excepted to the court’s decree and has come before us for review on a bill of exceptions comprising six counts. Count one of the bill reads : i. Because on the 9th day of February, 1968, petitioner filed an action of injunction against the respondent in which an interlocutory writ of injunction was issued against the respondent, commanding and enjoining it and its agents to stop and desist from all operations upon the parcel of land being too acres of land owned by petitioner, the subject matter of these injunction proceedings ; and the Sheriff did on the said ” 454 LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS 9th day of February, 1968, go on the scene of operations and there notified Mr. Guillermo Revuelta, the superintendent of the Bolado Sawmilling Company, in the presence of nearly fifty odd workers, that a writ of injunction had been issued against the said company, and that he was traveling to Monrovia to make further service upon the respondent but that in the meanwhile they should cease all operations thereat. But that in violation of the said writ of injunction and in defiance of the court’s orders, respondent never stopped the operations but continued to saw lumber and take away several truck loads to Monrovia. . . .” This one-hundred-acre tract of land which petitioner refers to in this count, is the subject matter of an ejectment suit already pending before the Circuit Court of the Ninth Judicial Circuit, and although the matter is still in litigation, he claims that the operations should cease by virtue of the writ of injunction and remain suspended indefinitely. In view of the dispute over title and the bond which was required, the court’s action seems to have been entirely correct, and there appears to have been no violation of any injunction. Injunctive relief is granted on equitable considerations and to those only who can show an equity entitling them to the remedy. A court in granting relief does so in the exercise of its discretion with the view of administering justice to the parties and this Court may not disturb the exercise of this discretion except if it is shown to have been palpably abused. An injunction does not lie except when there is a trespass and trespassing does not lie unless bona fide title is established in the one who claims ownership to the land. This had not been done, since the suit of ejectment still remains undetermined. In Wahob v. Adorkor, [1954] LRSC 30; 12 L.L.R. 152 (1954), the Court said that an action of injunction may be dismissed LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS 455 by the trial court without motion of the defendant. Further in the opinion, at pp. 155-156, the Court continued: “We are of the opinion that the filing of a motion to dissolve an injunction is surely an expeditious means of bringing the case to a judicial termination upon the issues raised in the answer, but its absence will not prevent the dissolution of said injunction upon defendant’s ‘sufficient answer to the complaint verified by oath.’ In the instant case the answer is verified by oath. Hence, the trial judge was right after the resting of pleadings to hear same and if sufficient grounds are shown in said verified answer, to support same.” “Generally, a judge having the power to issue a preliminary injunction does not in doing so exhaust his power over the order, but may subsequently modify or suspend it before the trial, where it appears that the injunction was improvidently granted or that the continuance thereof in its original form would result in serious injury or unnecessary hardship.” 28 AM. JUR., Injunction, � 311. The foregoing displays that the trial judge did have a right to exercise his discretion in dealing with the injunction, and although the field manager had been informed of the issuance of the writ of injunction and the service thereof and had not put a halt to his work immediately, it constituted no error on his part that he did not consider it in violation of the injunction. Count two contends : “And also because on the 14th day of February, 1968, respondent filed a motion for dissolution and bail; and on the 17th of February, 1968, petitioner filed a resistance to said motion for dissolution; but that despite the fact that no assignment was made or served on petitioner to appeal and oppose the motion and argue his resistance, the court in violation of statute granted bail thereby giving respondent permission to continue its operations, not having first disposed of 456 LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS the motion. To this act on the court’s part petitioner excepted.” Our statute is clear on this point, for our Civil Procedure Law, 1956 Code, tit. 6, � 1082, says that an injunction is never made permanent until the respondent has appeared to show cause why the writ shall be dissolved and why a permanent injunction shall not issue against him. The initial writ, therefore, is regarded as the preliminary one which should only issue after the judge has been fully satisfied by the evidence presented by the petitioner that immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage will result to him from the prospective actions of the respondent. The respondent below operated a concession given by the Government, where three or more hundred Liberian citizens earned their livelihood and contributed to the economy of the Country, who were about to be thrown out of employment and the Government lose income merely because a single citizen was claiming a contested right to a small tract of land said to be situated within the locality of the operation. This count charges the judge with granting bail to the respondent without the knowledge of the petitioner so that the operation could continue pending a determination of the injunction suit. We cannot agree with this view because, in the first place, this was the preliminary writ issued, and secondly, being a suit in equity the judge enjoyed discretionary power. “Injunctive relief, whether prohibitory or mandatory, is granted or withheld in the exercise of a sound judicial discretion and in conformity with settled equitable principles and considerations.” 28 AM. JuR., Injunctions, � 21. In Young v. Embree, [1936] LRSC 21; 5 L.L.R. 242 (1935-36) this Court held that injunction does not lie where title to real property is an issue involved ; more especially, where the party sought to be enjoined sets up adverse possession to said LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS 457 land, and in order to authorize punishment for the violation of an injunction, the acts complained of must be clearly embraced within the restraining clause of the injunction, so that the language of an order of injunction should not be extended to cover acts not fairly and reasonably within its meaning. As has already been said, title to the property still has not been determined, and the trial judge commented at length on this in his ruling. Count two, therefore, is not sustained. Count five alleges : “And also because on the 22nd of February, 1968, when for the first time upon an assignment petitioner’s counsel appeared in court, he insisted on making record against the court’s adverse action on the application for bail, and also the court’s disposition of petitioner’s bill of information.” In relation to this count, the court declined such request, ruling that it would be attended to in the final judgment. We cannot forget that this was an injunction suit, and in such a case title had to be unquestionably vested in the petitioner. Moreover, the judge was master of his own record, hence, if appellant desired to make a record not applicable to the facts and circumstances, the court in its own right was vested with the authority to deny the privilege. Count five is not sustained. Count six raises objections to the trial court’s references to the pending ejectment suit and its effect upon the injunction proceedings, which were entirely proper, in view of our comments above. Count six is not sustained. The one and only legal issue involved in this case that attracted our attention very strongly is the question of the cutting down or destruction of live trees on the property, which must have a tendency to diminish the value thereof. However, since under ch. III, � 5117, of our Civil Procedure Law, L. 1963-64, this Court enjoys the right to reverse, affirm or modify any judgment of a court be- 458 LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS low, and, realizing that until such time as the ejectment suit is finally disposed of and title determined, the trees, whether shade, ornamental, fruit or any other kind, should remain on the property uncut, it is, therefore, our judgment that the decree of the lower court be affirmed, with the modification that the appellee in this case abstain from cutting any trees from this particular tract of land until such time as the ejectment suit above mentioned is concluded in the manner aforesaid. This opinion, of course, does not include the whole area in which the Sawmilling Company operates, but rather it refers only to the particular ioo-acre tract now in litigation. Costs are hereby ruled against the appellant and the clerk of this Court is hereby ordered to send a mandate to the court below informing it of this judgment. And it is hereby so ordered. Affirmed as modified.