Wakilii

Komakech v Oroma & 3 Others (Miscellaneous Application 43 of 2024)

High Court · [2024] UGHC 742 · 2024 Application Dismissed AI-generated summary ↓ Download Pin to watchlist Add to matter
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Application for leave to amend plaint arising from civil suit concerning gift inter vivos of land
Decision
Application dismissed with costs to the respondents

Observed later treatment

No later-treatment classification is recorded for this judgment.

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Holding

An application for leave to amend a plaint will be dismissed where the proposed amendments seek to furtively expunge all references to an earlier related suit in a manner not indicative of good faith. The applicant attempted to remove all content regarding his late father's earlier trespass suit in which the applicant had been a witness, having previously falsely claimed he himself had instituted that suit. The deletions were effected without proper indication to the court and inconsistently, with the summary of evidence still retaining the false claim. Such amendments portend bad faith and malafides and will not be permitted.

Outcome

Application dismissed with costs to the respondents

Facts

The applicant (plaintiff in the main suit) claimed his late father gifted him approximately two acres of land at Ayul B Cell, Kitgum Municipality in 1991 as a gift inter vivos. His siblings (the respondents/defendants) contested this, asserting the land belonged to their late father's estate. The applicant sought leave to amend the plaint for the second time, claiming his previous lawyers had inadvertently stated in the original and first amended plaint that he himself had successfully sued a neighbour Aleng Benson for trespass in the 1990s and won, when in fact it was his late father who filed that suit and the applicant had merely been a witness. The proposed second amended plaint sought to delete all references to the earlier Aleng Benson suit. The land is valued at between UGX 30 million and UGX 200 million depending on which party's valuation is accepted.

Issues

  1. Whether sufficient cause is established for the Court to exercise its discretion to grant leave to the Applicant to amend the plaint

Orders

  • Application for amendment of the plaint dismissed.
  • Applicant to meet the costs of the application.

Rules and key headnotes

Civil Procedure — Amendment of Pleadings — Deletion of Material Content — Bad Faith
Where a proposed amendment seeks to furtively expunge material content from earlier pleadings without proper indication to the court of the deletions, and the expunged content is pertinent to a just determination of the suit, the amendment portends bad faith and malafides and the court will decline to grant leave.
Civil Procedure — Amendment of Pleadings — Notice to Court — Standard Practice
The standard practice in proposing amendments to pleadings requires that proposed additions be clearly highlighted and boldly underlined whilst matters expunged be clearly crossed through, the rationale being to give the court full notice of the changes intended.
Civil Procedure — Amendment of Pleadings — Inconsistency with Summary of Evidence
Where an applicant proposes to amend substantive paragraphs of a plaint but overlooks the need to correspondingly amend the summary of evidence which retains the old content contradicting the proposed amendments, the proposed amendment is clumsy, inconsistent and deficient and the court will not grant leave to amend such obfuscated pleading.
Civil Procedure — Amendment of Pleadings — Exercise of Discretion — Sufficient Cause
Where an applicant seeks to amend a plaint on the ground of inadvertence by previous counsel in including certain averments, but the court finds that the references sought to be expunged are forthright and pertinent to reaching a just and fair determination, the move to expunge will not be in the interests of substantive justice and sufficient cause is not established.

Legislation cited (3)

Cases cited (3)

  • Gaso Transport Services Limited v Martin Adala Obene (Supreme Court Civil Appeal No. 4 of 1994)
  • Lea Associates Limited v Bunga Hill House Limited (Miscellaneous Application No. 348 of 2002)
  • Namugenyi Margaret Ntabazi and Another v Nambi Stella and 4 Others (Miscellaneous Application No. 468 of 2016)

Full judgment

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

Komakech v Oroma & 3 Others (Miscellaneous Application 43 of 2024) [2024] UGHC 742 (16 August 2024)
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.