Car & General Ltd v AFS Construction (U) Limited (Misc. Application No. 371 of 2018)

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 single Justice considered an application for enlargement of time to file an appeal under Rule 5 of the Court of Appeal Rules Directions. The court reiterated that the applicant must show sufficient reason relating to the inability to take the required step within time. Declining to examine the merits of the intended appeal as none was yet before the court, the Justice found that the failure to give the applicant or its counsel notice of the High Court ruling—so that neither attended the ruling session nor could decide whether to appeal—was improper and amounted to sufficient reason. The application was granted and the notice of appeal ordered to be lodged within seven days.

Outcome

Application for extension of time granted; notice of appeal to be lodged within 7 days

Facts

The applicant sought to appeal against a ruling of Justice Billy Kainamura in Miscellaneous Application No. 87 of 2015, delivered on 21 December 2016, which it alleged was delivered without notice to the applicant or its lawyers. The underlying matter concerned an application to set aside an arbitral award, which award had been set aside by the High Court in HCMC No. 4 of 2015. The applicant claimed it only learned of the ruling on 8 November 2017 when its bankers were served with a garnishee order nisi, and filed this application about a week later. The respondent argued the application had been overtaken by events because the garnishee order nisi had been made absolute, and that the applicant was estopped by its own High Court pleadings, in which it acknowledged that the only outstanding issue was a claim exceeding USD 105,187 to be settled in HCMA No. 354 of 2018.

Issues

1. Whether the applicant showed sufficient reason to warrant an extension of time within which to file an appeal.

Orders

• Extension of time to file the appeal granted.
• Notice of Appeal to be lodged within 7 days from the date of delivery of this ruling.
• Costs of this application shall abide the result of the appeal.

Rules and key headnotes

Legislation cited (8)

• Civil Procedure Act s.79
• Civil Procedure Act s.96
• Civil Procedure Act s.98
• Judicature Act s.33
• Civil Procedure Rules Order 52 rules 1 & 3
• Evidence Act s.101
• Evidence Act s.102
• Judicature (Court of Appeal Rules) Directions Rule 5

Cases cited (5)

• Fazalbhai Vs Custodian AIR 1961 SC 284
• Nehawu Obo V. N Tumana Vs Commision for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration & others Case No. PI 15/08
• In Re. Christine Namatovu Tebajjukira Versus Noel Shalita (1992-93) HCB 85
• Dr Rubinga v Yakobo Kato & 2 Ors (Civil Appeal No. 35 of 1992)
• Rosette Kizito v Administrator General and others (Civil Application No. 9 of 1986)

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.

• Agaba Richard v Britam Insurance Company Limited (Civil Suits No. 0497 of 2019; Civil Suits No. 734 of 2020)
• Katamba v SESACO Limited (Civil Suit 978 of 2019)

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