American Procurement Company Ltd v Attorney General & Anor (Civil Appeal Number 0035 of 2009)

Observed later treatment

Citator coverage is limited to judgments in the Wakilii corpus and source-matched treatment records. Absence of a signal is not an assertion that the case remains good law.

Holding

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, holding that the trial judge correctly dismissed the suit against the Attorney General as premature. Where the Inspector General of Government had stopped payment and was investigating the legality of the contract for alleged fraud before the suit was filed, the contract was rendered non-justiciable and had not crystallised into one whose rights could be determined. An IGG order stopping payment is a valid defence since its disobedience attracts criminal sanctions. The Court declined to decide whether the Inspectorate has corporate capacity, finding the conflicting Supreme Court and Constitutional Court authorities could only be reconciled by the Constitutional Appeal Court. Each party bore its own costs.

Outcome

Appeal dismissed; the High Court judgment dismissing the suit stands

Facts

The appellant company contracted with the Government in January 2006 to provide ex-post-facto procurement audits for the Ministry of Works and the Roads Agency Formation Unit, with a total contract value of about shs 6.17 billion. The appellant claimed to have performed part of the work entitling it to shs 4,163,593,613 but was not paid. In April 2006, before any suit, the Inspector General of Government ordered payments stopped pending investigation of the contract for alleged fraud. The appellant served statutory notice and in November 2006 sued the Attorney General. The Inspectorate of Government was joined as a defendant; an ex-parte default decree obtained from the Registrar was later set aside. The contract and invoices were never annexed to the pleadings. After an inter-partes hearing, the High Court dismissed the suit as premature because the contract remained under IGG investigation. The appellant appealed.

Issues

1. Whether the suit against the Attorney General was premature given that the contract was under investigation by the Inspectorate of Government.
2. Whether an order of the Inspector General of Government stopping payment under a contract constitutes a valid defence to a suit on that contract.
3. Whether the legal capacity of the Inspectorate of Government to sue or be sued had been finally settled by the Supreme Court.

Orders

• Appeal dismissed.
• Each party to bear its own costs.

Rules and key headnotes

Legislation cited (6)

• Inspectorate of Government Act s.19(1)
• Government Proceedings Act
• Civil Procedure Rules O.1 r.10(2)
• Civil Procedure Rules O.1 r.13
• Constitution of Uganda Article 225(2)
• Public Enterprises Reform and Divestiture Act (Cap 98) s.4

Cases cited (4)

• Edith Natumbwe and Others v Miriam Kuteesa (Civil Application No. 294 of 2013)
• Gordon Sentiba and 2 Others v Inspectorate of Government (Civil Appeal No. 6 of 2006)
• Inspectorate of Government v Kikondwa Butema Farms Ltd and Attorney General (Constitutional Petition No. 14 of 2007)
• Metropolitan Water Board v Dick Kerr and Co Ltd [1918] AC 119

Cases citing this judgment (2)

How later Ugandan judgments in the Wakilii corpus have cited this case. Treatment labels come from Sequitur — Uganda’s citator — each backed by a verbatim span from the citing judgment, and are not an assertion that this case is, or is not, good law.

• Mugubi and Another v Banja and Another (Civil Appeal No. 84 of 2021)
• Lakeside Township Ltd & 2 Ors v Lakeside City Ltd & Anor (Civil Appeal No. 100 of 2012)

The original judgment as reported. Read the original PDF before relying on any passage.