Wakilii

Damji Sidra v Damji Sidra and Others (Civil Appeal No. 60 of 1995)

Supreme Court · [1995] UGSC 39 · 1995 Appeal Dismissed AI-generated summary ↓ Download Pin to watchlist Add to matter
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Appeal to the Supreme Court from the High Court's dismissal of an application to review an order requiring the appellant (plaintiff) to provide security for costs.
Decision
Appeal dismissed with costs; the High Court order requiring the appellant to provide security for costs stands.

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.

AI-generated summary. This summary was generated by AI from the full text of the judgment. It may contain errors or omissions—always read the source judgment before relying on it.

Holding

The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal. A plaintiff ordinarily resident abroad is prima facie bound to give security for costs and, to escape it, must show substantial property within the jurisdiction of a fixed and permanent, not floating, nature available to execution. The appellant's only claimed asset, a speculative share in an unadministered estate, was not fixed property. Her temporary presence in Uganda to prosecute the suit did not exempt her (Ebrard v Gassier distinguished). The trial judge properly weighed the suit's poor prospects (a will challenged 36 years after probate) and rightly found security was not used oppressively. The Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act had not been applied to India.

Outcome

Appeal dismissed with costs; the High Court order requiring the appellant to provide security for costs stands.

Facts

The appellant, resident in India, sued the respondents in the High Court (Civil Suit No. 591 of 1990) to declare void an alleged will of her late father, Damji Kara Sidpra, who died in 1958; probate had been granted to the first respondent as executrix in September 1958. The respondents, as defendants, applied under Order 23 rule 1 for security for costs on the ground that the plaintiff resided abroad. Tsekooko J ordered her to deposit Shs 3 million within four months. She applied to review that order; Mpagi-Bahigeine J dismissed the review on 25 September 1995, finding her only claimed Ugandan asset was a speculative, unascertained share in her late brother's (the third respondent's) estate. That estate, said to derive from the father's estate, remained unadministered, letters of administration having issued only in July 1995. The appellant valued her expected share at about Shs 70 million and contended it was a fixed asset sufficient to meet the respondents' costs.

Issues

  1. Whether the appellant had fixed and permanent property within the jurisdiction sufficient to relieve a plaintiff resident abroad of the obligation to provide security for costs.
  2. Whether the appellant's temporary presence in Uganda to prosecute her suit exempted her from providing security for costs.
  3. Whether the prospects of success of the appellant's underlying suit justified refusing security for costs.
  4. Whether the order for security for costs was being used oppressively to deny the appellant access to court.
  5. Whether reciprocal enforcement of judgments between Uganda and India under the Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act removed the need for security for costs.

Orders

  • Appeal dismissed.
  • Costs of the appeal and of the court below awarded to the respondents.

Rules and key headnotes

Security for Costs — Plaintiff Resident Abroad
A plaintiff ordinarily resident outside the jurisdiction is prima facie bound to provide security for costs, and to escape that obligation must show substantial property within the jurisdiction of a fixed and permanent, rather than floating, nature available to satisfy a costs order.
Security for Costs — Nature of Property
A speculative, unascertained share in an unadministered estate is not fixed property within the jurisdiction and does not relieve a foreign plaintiff of the obligation to give security for costs.
Security for Costs — Temporary Presence of Plaintiff
The temporary presence of a foreign plaintiff within the jurisdiction for the purpose of prosecuting her suit does not by itself exempt her from providing security for costs.
Security for Costs — Merits of Claim
In deciding whether to order security for costs the court may take into account the plaintiff's prospects of success, and a claim challenging a will many years after the grant of probate, facing limitation obstacles, may properly be assessed as having poor prospects.
Security for Costs — Oppression and Access to Court
An order for security for costs must not be used as a weapon of oppression to stifle a genuine claim or to bar a poor litigant from access to the court; mere poverty of a plaintiff is not by itself a ground for ordering security.
Security for Costs — Reciprocal Enforcement of Judgments
Reciprocal enforcement of foreign judgments does not displace the requirement of security for costs unless the responsible Minister has by statutory order applied the Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act to the relevant country.

Legislation cited (10)

Cases cited (8)

  • Ebrard v Gassier (1885) 28 Ch D 232
  • Kevorkian v Burney (No.2) (1937) 4 All E.R. 468
  • In re Apollinaris Company's Trade Marks [1891] 1 Ch 1
  • Farrab Incorporated v Brian John Robson and Others (1957) EA 441
  • Sir Lindsay Parkinson & Co Ltd v Triplan Ltd [1973] 1 QB 609
  • Namboro v Kaala (1975) HCB 315
  • Porzelack KG v Porzelack (UK) Ltd [1987] 1 All ER 1074
  • Vallabhdas Hirji Kapadia v T Larmidas (1960) EA 852

Full judgment

↓ Download PDF

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

Damji Sidra v Damji Sidra and Others (Civil Appeal No. 60 of 1995) [1995] UGSC 39 (3 February 1995)
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.