Vantage Mezzanine Fund II Partnership and Another v Simba Properties Investment Co Ltd and Others [2025] UGCA 278

Court of Appeal · 2025 Application Granted ✦ AI-generated summary ↓ Download

Jurisdiction

Uganda

Case Type

Application to strike out a notice of appeal lodged against an interlocutory order of the High Court made in arbitral enforcement proceedings.

Decision

Application to strike out granted; notice of appeal struck out with costs

The full judgment

Read the complete, verbatim text of this judgment.

AI-generated summary. This summary was generated by AI from the full text of the judgment. It may contain errors or omissions — always read the source judgment before relying on it.

Holding

The Court held that no appeal lies against the High Court's interlocutory order. The main proceedings were for recognition and enforcement of an arbitral award and were therefore governed by the Arbitration and Conciliation Act; the fact that the court invoked section 33 of the Judicature Act and section 98 of the Civil Procedure Act did not take the orders outside the arbitral proceedings. By section 9 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, no court may intervene except as provided in the Act, and no right of appeal was created. The notice of appeal was incompetent and was struck out with costs.

Facts

The High Court (Ocaya, J.) made an order on 17 November 2023 in arbitral enforcement proceedings, restraining the Commissioner of Lands and the Uganda Registration Services Bureau from acting on mortgaged titles and corporate registrations affecting the applicants' rights under a Final Arbitral Award and its Addendum, and suspending certain board resolutions, pending determination of the application for recognition and enforcement of the award. The respondents filed a notice of appeal against that order on 14 December 2023. They had earlier filed an application for leave to appeal (Misc. Application No. 2809 of 2023), expressly acknowledging that there was no automatic right of appeal, but withdrew it. The applicants then applied to strike out the notice of appeal on the grounds that no appeal lay against a decision made under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act and that the necessary steps had not been taken in time.

Issues

Whether an appeal lies to the Court of Appeal against an interlocutory order of the High Court made in proceedings governed by the Arbitration and Conciliation Act.
Whether the respondents had an automatic right of appeal against the High Court's order.

Orders

Notice of appeal struck out as incompetent.
Costs awarded against the respondents.

Key headnotes

Appeals — Jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal — Requirement of a statutory right of appeal

The Court of Appeal has jurisdiction to entertain an appeal from the High Court under section 10 of the Judicature Act only where a right of appeal has been created by law.

Arbitration and Conciliation Act — Scope of arbitral proceedings — Reliance on provisions of other statutes

Orders made in proceedings for the recognition and enforcement of an arbitral award remain part of the proceedings under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, and the application of provisions found in other statutes does not take those orders outside the Act.

Arbitration and Conciliation Act s.9 — Limitation of court intervention — No right of appeal

Section 9 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act bars court intervention except as provided in the Act, and no appeal lies against an interlocutory order made in proceedings governed by that Act; such a notice of appeal is incompetent and is liable to be struck out.

Legislation cited (4)

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

Cases cited (2)

[2015] UGCA 2016
[2011] 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.