Wakilii

Meera Investments Ltd v National Water and Sewerage Corporation and Another (Civil Application 285 of 2016)

Court of Appeal · [2017] UGCA 150 · 2017 Application Dismissed ✦ AI-generated summary ↓ Download
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Application for an interim order of injunction pending appeal, brought before a single Justice of the Court of Appeal
Decision
Application for interim injunction dismissed with costs

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Cited — treatment unverified cited in 1 (treatment unverified) Derived from citing cases in the Wakilii corpus — not an assertion that this case is good law.

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Holding

A single Justice of the Court of Appeal dismissed an application for an interim injunction to restrain construction of sewer pipes on the applicant's land. The Court held that the works had already been completed, so there was no longer any threat that the injunction could prevent. The balance of convenience favoured the respondents and the general public, given the public sewerage function in Kampala. The Court further found that the applicant's pursuit of an appeal, a substantive application and an interim application all seeking the same remedy amounted to an abuse of legal process and vexatious litigation. The application was dismissed with costs.

Facts

Meera Investments Limited, the registered owner of land at Hill Crescent and Mukabya Close, Banda-Kampala, sued National Water & Sewerage Corporation and SOGEA SATOM Limited in High Court Civil Suit No. 518 of 2016 alleging trespass when the respondents laid concrete iron support structures and sewer pipes on the land. That suit, seeking restoration of the land, a permanent injunction and damages, remained pending. The applicant's High Court application for an interim injunction was dismissed with costs on 31 October 2016. The applicant lodged a Notice of Appeal, plus a substantive injunction application (No. 284 of 2016) and this interim injunction application (No. 285 of 2016) in the Court of Appeal, all seeking the same remedy. By January 2017 construction and placement of sewer pipes on the land for expanding Kampala's sewerage collection capacity had been completed. The respondents offered UGX 71 million compensation while the applicant demanded UGX 1.1 billion; the dispute over compensation awaited determination in the main suit.

Issues

  1. Whether the applicant made out a case for the grant of an interim order of injunction to restrain construction of sewer pipes on the suit land pending appeal.
  2. Whether the applicant's resort to multiple parallel proceedings seeking the same remedy amounted to an abuse of court process.

Orders

  • This application stands dismissed with costs to the respondent.

Key headnotes

Civil Procedure — Interim Injunction — Preservation of Status Quo
An interim order of injunction is intended to preserve the status quo pending determination of the main issues; where the acts sought to be restrained have already been completed, there is no longer any threat for the order to prevent and the application must fail.
Civil Procedure — Injunctions — Balance of Convenience and Public Interest
Where the act sought to be restrained serves a public interest, such as control of sewerage for a capital city, the balance of convenience may favour refusing an injunction whose grant would inconvenience the respondents and the general public.
Civil Procedure — Abuse of Process — Multiplicity of Proceedings
Pursuing an appeal, a substantive injunction application and an interim injunction application simultaneously, all seeking the same remedy, amounts to an abuse of legal procedure and vexatious litigation that the court has a duty to restrain.

Legislation cited (3)

  • Judicature (Court of Appeal) Rules SI 13-10 r.2
  • Judicature (Court of Appeal) Rules SI 13-10 r.6(b)
  • Judicature (Court of Appeal) Rules SI 13-10 r.76

Cases cited (4)

  • Yakobo Sekungu and Others v Crensio Mukasa (Civil Application No. 5 of 2013)
  • Mathew Rukikaire v Incafex Limited (Civil Application No. 11 of 2015)
  • American Cyanamid Co v Ethicon Ltd [1975] AC 396
  • Robert Kavuma v Hotel International (Supreme Court Civil Appeal No. 8 of 1990)
Source: this page presents Wakilii’s issue analysis and metadata for a publicly reported Ugandan judgment. Any AI-generated summary is marked as such. Judgment text is sourced from the Uganda Legal Information Institute (ulii.org). Wakilii is not affiliated with ULII.