Account-Account stated-Reopening account on grounds of error-Onus of                                         

                 proof-Incomplete records                                                                                                 

Appellant and respondent, being partners, took a partnership account
in February and March 1934, and agreed that a total of E.86.460 m/ms
was due from appellant to respondent. Appellant accordingly made prom-
issory notes in favour of respondent for that sum. The sum due was ar-
rived at mainly from accounts kept by appelJant, but these accounts did not
present a complete record of the transactions between the parties. Subse- •
quently appelJant claimed in the High Court to reopen the account on the
ground of errors in the accounts, but his claim was rejected and judgement
given for respondent on his counterclaim for £E.86.460 m/ms, Appellant
appealed.

Held: An account having been stated, the onus of proof of errors lay
upon the party who sought to reopen the account, and such onus had not
been discharged by the appellant. The partnership accounts were incom-
plete and incomprehensible to anyone but the partners, and there was no
way to determine whether mistakes had been made.

Appeal

June 16, 1938. Creed C.J.: This is an appeal against the decree
of the High Court. Khartoum, ordering the dismissal of the appellant's
claim and the payment by the appellant to the respondent of the sum
of £E.86,460 m/ms and costs on the counterclaim.

The facts of the case are briefly as follows. The parties, who
were partners in certain transactions, checked their accounts together
in February 1934 and as a result of their checking agreed that the

* Court: Creed C.l., Evans R.G.L. and Sandes J.

sum of £E.72.460 m/rns was due from the appellant to the respond-
ent. It is admitted that the accounts mainly relied on in making the
account were those of the appellant. Promissory notes were drawn
by the appellant in favour of the respondent for that sum. On March
2, 1934, as the result of a further checking, it was agreed that an ad-
ditional sum of £E.14 was due to the respondent, and two further
promissory notes for a total of £E.14 were made by the appellant in
respondent's favour.

The appellant alleged in the court below that in. April 1934, on a
further checking of his own accounts, he discovered that he had made
certain mistakes in these accounts and on July 2, 1934, he raised an
action in the High Court claiming (1) that the account between the
respondent and himself should be reopened, (2) that the twelve prom-
issory notes which he had signed should be set aside, and (3) that
the respondent should pay to him the sum found due after a reopening
of the accounts.

The judge of the High Court, after a detailed hearing ofthe case,
found that the accounts of the appellant as presented to him were
totally unreliable, and were not sufficiently comprehensive to enable
him to decide if the final account had been effected by error or mistake.
He rightly stated that when an account has been staetd between the
parties, the onus of proof of error or mistake lies on the party claiming
to reopen the account, and found that no such error or mistake had
been proved. He therefore gave judgement for the respondent on the
claim, and entered judgement on the counterclaim in favour of the
respondent for the value of the promissory notes.

The appeal is based on the ground that mistakes were proved
in the court below, and this court is asked to make an order that the
accounts between the parties be reopened from the beginning of the
transactions.

As stated above, the parties at their joint examination of the ac-
counts mainly relied on the appellant's accounts. At one aod the
same time the appellant alleged before the High Court that his own
accounts contained no fewer than nineteen errors and mistakes, and
asked the court to rely 00 these same accounts as satisfactory proof
of the errors alleged. The accounts, which were presumably intel- _
ligible to the parties when the account was stated in 1934 owing to
their special knowledge of the various transactions concerned, do not
present a complete and comprehensive record of the transactions be-