Wakilii

Kiirya Hillary v The New Vision Printing & Publishing Company & Anor (Civil Suit No. 144 of 2007) (Civil Suit No. 144 of 2007)

High Court · [2007] UGHC 28 · 2007 Preliminary Objection Dismissed AI-generated summary ↓ Download Pin to watchlist Add to matter
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Interlocutory ruling on objection to admission of document during re-examination in a first instance civil suit
Decision
Objection dismissed; document admitted subject to defendant's right to further cross-examination

Observed later treatment

Cited — treatment unverified cited in 2 (treatment unverified) Sequitur — Uganda’s citator · Derived from citing cases in the Wakilii corpus — not an assertion that this case is good law.

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.

No adverse treatment recorded Cited 2 times with no adverse treatment recorded; not yet tested on the merits. Citations rising — 3 citing cases on record, 3 in the most recent three data years. Derived from citing cases in the Wakilii corpus — a deterministic signal, not legal advice.
Judicial journey

Appeal & case history

2 linked decisions

Follow this matter from the decision below through each appellate court.

High Court This decision
Kiirya Hillary v The New Vision Printing & Publishing Company & Anor (Civil Suit No. 144 of 2007) (Civil Suit No. 144 of 2007) [2007] UGHC 28 (11 October 2007)
[2007] UGHC 28
Varied The decision below was changed in part.
See the court’s words
“I woutd set aside the judgment of the High Court and substituted with an order dismissing the”
No later appellate decision was located in the Wakilii corpus. Linked from court records and operative language in the judgments.

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 court allowed the plaintiff to tender a document accessed from a website as evidence, despite it not being agreed upon at scheduling, on the ground that the document was relevant to the central issue of whether the plaintiff authored the article that caused his dismissal. The defendant was afforded the opportunity to take instructions and conduct further cross-examination to minimise any prejudice from late admission.

Outcome

Objection dismissed; document admitted subject to defendant's right to further cross-examination

Facts

The plaintiff was employed by the New Vision newspaper. He was dismissed after management suspected he furnished an article to the Monitor newspaper. At scheduling, a Monitor article dated 29 January 2007 entitled "OTAFIIRE CITED IN CENTENARY PARK LAND ROW" was admitted by consent as the article allegedly causing dismissal. During cross-examination, the plaintiff denied authoring that article and claimed he accessed it from the Monitor website to use for his own story. In re-examination, the plaintiff sought to tender a printout of the article he accessed from the Monitor website. The defendant objected, arguing the plaintiff was departing from pleadings and raising new grounds not contemplated at scheduling. The plaintiff had filed the document on 29 June 2007 and served it on defence counsel on 2 July 2007.

Issues

  1. Whether the plaintiff should be permitted to tender in evidence a document not agreed upon at the scheduling conference.
  2. Whether admission of the document would prejudice the defendant by departing from pleadings and raising a new ground of claim.

Orders

  • The plaintiff is allowed to tender the document as part of his evidence.
  • The defendant is at liberty to seek time to get instructions on the document and to cross-examine the plaintiff further on the said document.
  • The preliminary objection is dismissed.
  • Costs shall be in the cause.

Rules and key headnotes

Evidence — Admissibility — Discretion of Court — Documents Not Agreed at Scheduling
The court has discretion under section 135 of the Evidence Act to admit relevant documents during trial even where they were not agreed upon at the scheduling conference, particularly where the document is necessary to resolve a central issue in the case.
Civil Procedure — Pleadings — Departure from Pleadings — Prejudice to Opposite Party
Where a party seeks to adduce evidence on a matter arising from cross-examination, prejudice to the opposite party can be minimised by affording that party time to take instructions and an opportunity for further cross-examination, rather than by excluding relevant evidence.
Evidence — Relevance — Authorship of Documents in Employment Dismissal Case
In a case where an employee's dismissal is premised on alleged authorship of an article, evidence as to what the employee did or did not author is relevant and material to determining whether the dismissal was justified.

Legislation cited (2)

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.

Full judgment

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

Kiirya Hillary v The New Vision Printing & Publishing Company & Anor (Civil Suit No. 144 of 2007) (Civil Suit No. 144 of 2007) [2007] UGHC 28 (11 October 2007)
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.