Rurangaranga & Anor v Horizone courches [2009] UGSC 30

Supreme Court · 2009 Application Granted ✦ AI-generated summary ↓ Download

Jurisdiction

Uganda

Case Type

Application to strike out a notice of appeal lodged in the Supreme Court

Decision

Notice of appeal struck out and costs awarded to the applicants

The full judgment

Read the complete, verbatim text of this judgment.

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

The Court held that rule 74(1) of the Rules of the Supreme Court is couched in mandatory terms and requires an intended appellant to serve copies of the notice of appeal on all persons directly affected by the appeal; where such persons took no part in the proceedings below, the appellant must obtain a direction from the Court dispensing with service. The respondent neither served its co-defendants nor obtained such a direction, so the omission was a failure to take an essential step. The fact that the co-defendants took no part below did not relieve the respondent of the duty. The application was allowed and the notice of appeal struck out, no cross appeal being required to raise the point.

Facts

The applicants had successfully sued the respondent and three co-defendants (the Attorney General, Waiswa Moses and Mukwano Enterprises Ltd) in High Court Civil Suit No. 234 of 2007 over a land dispute. The respondent alone appealed to the Court of Appeal, later serving the notice of appeal on the co-defendants after an extension of time. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and confirmed the High Court decree. The respondent then lodged a notice of appeal to the Supreme Court on 14 August 2008 but did not serve copies on its co-defendants, nor did it obtain a direction from the Court dispensing with such service. The decree affected the respondent and all its co-defendants jointly; if the respondent succeeded in setting aside the judgment, the decree could be executed against the co-defendants. The applicants applied to strike out the notice of appeal for failure to serve persons directly affected by the appeal.

Issues

Whether failure to serve copies of the notice of appeal on co-defendants who were directly affected by the appeal, but who took no part in the proceedings below, amounted to failure to take an essential step under rule 74(1) of the Rules of the Supreme Court.
Whether the applicants needed to file a notice of cross appeal in order to raise the point of non-service in the Supreme Court.

Orders

Application allowed.
Notice of appeal lodged by the respondent on 14-08-2008 struck out.
Respondent to pay the applicants' costs of the application.

Key headnotes

Civil Procedure — Appeals — Service of Notice of Appeal on Persons Directly Affected (r.74(1))

Rule 74(1) of the Rules of the Supreme Court is mandatory and requires an intended appellant to serve copies of the notice of appeal on all persons directly affected by the appeal; failure to do so is a failure to take an essential step in the appeal process.

Civil Procedure — Appeals — Dispensing with Service on Parties Who Took No Part Below

Where a person directly affected by the appeal took no part in the proceedings in the High Court or Court of Appeal, the intended appellant must obtain a direction of the Court dispensing with service; the mere fact that such a person took no part below does not by itself excuse service of the notice of appeal.

Civil Procedure — Appeals — Joint vs Alternative Claims — Distinguishing Authority

An authority on want of parties is distinguishable where the claim against the appellant and its co-defendants was joint rather than in the alternative, since a successful appeal setting aside the judgment against one defendant would leave the decree executable against the others.

Civil Procedure — Appeals — Cross Appeal Not Required to Raise New Point of Non-Service

A notice of cross appeal is not required to raise an objection that the notice of appeal to the Supreme Court was not served on persons directly affected, where that point is distinct from a similar point raised but not decided in the court below and the party is not appealing against that court's failure to pronounce on it.

Legislation cited (4)

Rules of the Supreme Court r.42(1)
Rules of the Supreme Court r.74(1)
Rules of the Supreme Court r.78
Court of Appeal Rules r.78(1)

Cases cited (1)

Ahmed Bin Ahmed Kassim Kusais v Syed Abdullah Fadhal (1958) EA 60

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.