Wakilii

Vantage Mezzanine Fund II Partnership and Another v Simba Properties Investment Co. Ltd and Others (Civil Application No. 305 of 2025)

Court of Appeal · [2025] UGCA 278 · 2025 Application Granted ✦ AI-generated summary ↓ Download
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Application to strike out a notice of appeal
Decision
Notice of appeal struck out as incompetent with costs

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Cited — treatment unverified cited in 2 (treatment unverified) Derived from citing cases in the Wakilii corpus — not an assertion that this case is good law.

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Holding

The Court of Appeal struck out the respondents' notice of appeal as incompetent. It held that the High Court orders intended to be appealed were made in proceedings under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, and that the mere application of provisions outside that Act (sections 33 of the Judicature Act and 98 of the Civil Procedure Act) did not remove the proceedings from its ambit. Section 9 of the Act bars court intervention in matters governed by it except as the Act provides, and section 10 of the Judicature Act requires a right of appeal created by law. No such right existed, so no appeal lay and the notice of appeal was struck out with costs.

Facts

The High Court (Ocaya, J.) in Miscellaneous Application No. 2484 of 2023 issued interim orders restraining the Commissioner of Lands and the Uganda Registration Services Bureau from acting on title and corporate registrations, and suspended certain board resolutions, pending determination of an application to recognise and enforce a Final Arbitral Award and its Addendum between the parties. The respondents filed a notice of appeal against that decision. The applicants then applied to strike out the notice of appeal, contending that no appeal lay because the decision was made in proceedings under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, and that the notice was filed out of time. The respondents had earlier filed, then withdrawn, an application for leave to appeal premised on there being no automatic right of appeal from such interim protection orders.

Issues

  1. Whether an appeal lies against the decision of the High Court given that it was made in proceedings governed by the Arbitration and Conciliation Act.
  2. Whether orders made by applying sections of the Judicature Act and Civil Procedure Act in arbitration-related proceedings fall outside the Arbitration and Conciliation Act so as to be appealable.

Orders

  • The notice of appeal is struck out with costs.
  • It is unnecessary to consider the application on the other grounds raised, which arise in other matters between the same parties.

Key headnotes

Arbitration & ADR — Court Intervention — Section 9 Arbitration and Conciliation Act
A court shall not intervene in matters governed by the Arbitration and Conciliation Act except as provided in that Act.
Arbitration & ADR — Scope of Arbitral Proceedings — Application of External Statutory Provisions
Proceedings remain within the Arbitration and Conciliation Act even where the court applies provisions found in other statutes; reliance on external law to decide a particular question does not take the proceedings or resulting orders outside the Act.
Civil Procedure — Appeals — Right of Appeal Must Be Created by Law
For the Court of Appeal to have jurisdiction over an appeal from the High Court under section 10 of the Judicature Act, there must be a right of appeal created by law; absent such a right, a notice of appeal is incompetent and will be struck out.

Legislation cited (4)

  • Judicature Act s.10
  • Judicature Act s.33
  • Arbitration and Conciliation Act s.9
  • Civil Procedure Act s.98

Cases cited (2)

  • Babcon Uganda Ltd v Mbale Resort Hotel Ltd [2015] UGCA 2016
  • Babcon Uganda Ltd v Mbale Resort Hotel Ltd l20lll UGSC 83
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.