Vimila Thakkar v Lalita Minilal Raja and Ors [2004] UGSC 20

Supreme Court · 2004 Appeal Allowed ✦ AI-generated summary ↓ Download

Jurisdiction

Uganda

Case Type

Second appeal to the Supreme Court from the Court of Appeal, challenging the award of costs only, the substantive suit having been settled by consent in the High Court

Decision

Appeal allowed; the lower courts' awards of costs to the respondents set aside and each party ordered to bear its own costs

The full judgment

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Holding

The substantive sublease dispute over ground rent and re-entry had been settled by consent in the High Court, leaving only the question of costs. The Supreme Court held that neither party could correctly claim to have won or lost: the appellant insisted on paying the obsolete 1933 fixed rent while the respondents failed to specify the revised amount, ignored her part-payment and tender of £300, and pressed for re-entry. As neither side came to equity with clean hands, both lower courts erred in awarding costs to the respondents. The appeal succeeded and each party was ordered to bear its own costs in the Supreme Court and in the courts below.

Facts

The dispute concerned a sublease of Plot No. 6 and 6A, Market Street, Kampala (Volume 1 Folio 24), relating to payment of ground rent and the power of re-entry. The appellant, resident in Leicester, UK, offered to pay the original 1933 fixed rent of Shs. 53/75 per month plus arrears, while the respondents demanded 25% of the head-lease rent assessed by Kampala City Council at Shs. 348,355. The respondents did not specify the exact 25% figure, declined to treat the appellant's payments as part-payment, and did not respond to her tender of £300 sent through her lawyers, despite knowing she had authorised agents in Kampala. The respondents pressed for re-entry, sending final-notice letters to the appellant's UK address. The substantive suit was settled by consent before the Principal Judge, leaving only the question of costs, which the High Court and Court of Appeal awarded to the respondents on the ground that the appellant's intransigence had caused the suit.

Issues

Whether the High Court and Court of Appeal erred in awarding the costs of the suit to the respondents.
Whether the litigation became necessary through the intransigence of the appellant in refusing to pay the revised rent.

Orders

Appeal allowed.
Each party to bear its own costs in the Supreme Court and in the courts below.

Key headnotes

Civil Procedure — Costs — Award of costs where neither party wholly successful

Where a suit is compromised by consent and neither party can correctly claim to have won or lost, and both sides contributed to the failure to settle the dispute, the appropriate order is that each party bears its own costs rather than an award of costs to one side.

Civil Procedure — Costs — Equitable conduct of parties — Clean hands

Costs ought not be awarded against one party where neither party has acted in conformity with the equitable maxim that he who comes to equity must come with clean hands, both having failed to do all they reasonably could to settle the dispute.

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.