Mayambala v Uganda Commercial Bank (Civil Application No. 9 of 1999)

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 judge held that the Court of Appeal, as an appellate court, cannot entertain applications relating to matters that have not been made the subject of an appeal to it. The applicant's earlier appeal (Civil Appeal No. 4 of 1998) had been struck off after he disowned the record of appeal filed by his former advocates and filed no replacement. As no appeal was pending, the application to substitute the Privatisation Unit for the defunct Uganda Commercial Bank was misconceived and was struck off. No order as to costs was made.

Outcome

Application struck off for being misconceived as no appeal was pending before the court

Facts

In 1981 the applicant filed Civil Suit No. 160 of 1981 against Uganda Commercial Bank. The suit was determined against him in January 1992. On 22 December 1997 a single judge allowed the applicant to file a notice of appeal. A notice and memorandum of appeal were filed as Civil Appeal No. 4 of 1998 and fixed for hearing on 26 October 1998. On the hearing date the applicant disowned the record of appeal drawn by his former advocates, M/s Zaabwe & Co., whom he had dismissed, and the notice of appeal they prepared. The Court of Appeal struck off Civil Appeal No. 4 of 1998, holding that no appeal was pending. The applicant filed no further appeal. He subsequently brought three civil applications seeking to substitute or join other persons or organisations in place of Uganda Commercial Bank, which had ceased to exist as a legal entity. The present application (No. 9 of 1999) sought to substitute the Privatisation Unit of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning for the bank.

Issues

1. Whether the Court of Appeal can entertain an application to substitute a party in a suit where no appeal is pending before the court.

Orders

• The application is struck off.
• No order as to costs.

Rules and key headnotes

Cases citing this judgment (1)

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.

• Mayambala v Stanbic Bank Uganda Limited (Civil Appeal 245 of 2015; Civil Appeal 46 of 2011)

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