Bagumirabingi v Makerere University Business School (MUBS) and 3 Others (Miscellaneous Application No. 451 of 2022)

Observed later treatment

No later-treatment classification is recorded for this judgment.

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 dismissed the application for interim injunction on the ground that no main application for temporary injunction was pending before the court, only a judicial review application. The court held that preliminary objections relating to exhaustion of local remedies and proper party were misconceived in an interim application and should properly be raised in the substantive judicial review. The court further held that even if it had discretion, it would not grant the relief as guild election outcomes could be challenged post-election.

Outcome

Application for interim injunction dismissed; preliminary objections dismissed as misconceived in interim application

Facts

The applicant, a second-year student at MUBS, sought nomination as a guild presidential candidate for elections scheduled for 23 August 2022. The respondents declined to nominate him on grounds that he was not a registered student. The applicant received an invoice to pay school fees on 9 August 2022 at 12:30pm and paid at 2:48pm, 18 minutes after the 2:00pm closure of nominations. He was registered on 12 August 2022, three days after nominations closed. The applicant filed a judicial review application and sought an interim injunction to restrain the elections or, alternatively, to cancel election results if conducted before the hearing. The respondents raised preliminary objections that the applicant had not exhausted internal remedies under the MUBS Students Guild Constitution and that MUBS could only be sued through its governing council.

Issues

1. Whether the applicant was entitled to an interim injunction restraining the respondents from conducting guild presidential elections.
2. Whether the preliminary objections raised by the respondents (exhaustion of local remedies and suing the proper party) were properly raised in an application for interim relief.
3. Whether there was a pending main application that could be rendered nugatory if the interim order was not granted.

Orders

• Application dismissed.
• Costs in the cause.

Rules and key headnotes

Legislation cited (5)

• Civil Procedure Act s.98
• Civil Procedure Rules 2019 O.50 r.3A(1)
• Civil Procedure Rules 2019 O.50 r.3A(2)
• Civil Procedure Rules 2019 O.50 r.3A(3)
• Judicature (Judicial Review) (Amendment) Rules 2019 r.7A(1)(b)

Cases cited (2)

• Hwan Sung Industries Ltd v Tajdin Hussein and 2 Others (Civil Application No. 19 of 2008)
• Yahaya Kariisa v Attorney General and Another (Supreme Court Civil Appeal No. 7 of 1994)

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