Wakilii

Mustapha Ramathan Ta Bombo Wholesalers and Another v Century Bottling Company Limited (Civil Appeal 40 of 2010)

Court of Appeal · [2019] UGCA 2096 · 2019 Appeal Dismissed AI-generated summary ↓ Download Pin to watchlist Add to matter
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Civil appeal from a High Court (Commercial Court Division) judgment dismissing a claim for special damages
Decision
Appeal dismissed; High Court refusal to award further special damages upheld

Observed later treatment

Cited — treatment unverified cited in 1 (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 1 time with no adverse treatment recorded; not yet tested on the merits. Derived from citing cases in the Wakilii corpus — a deterministic signal, not legal advice.

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 of Appeal dismissed the appellants' appeal against the High Court's refusal to award various heads of special damages. Reaffirming that special damages must be specifically pleaded and strictly proved, the court found that the documentary evidence either did not refer to the suing entity (Bombo Wholesalers), related to distinct entities (Top Bombo Wholesalers and Bombo Wholesalers Ltd), or was speculative and unproven. The claim for loss of future earnings over ten years was purely speculative. The court further observed that the original action was premised on a 1999 agency agreement that had terminated upon dissolution of the partnership in 2005, so the action as framed had no chance of success.

Outcome

Appeal dismissed; High Court refusal to award further special damages upheld

Facts

On 29 June 1999 Bombo Wholesalers, a partnership of three brothers, executed an agency agreement granting it exclusive distribution of the respondent's products in a defined territory. In 2005 Kassim Ramathan registered a new entity, Top Bombo Wholesalers, which executed a Manual Distribution Centre (MDC) agreement with the respondent. The appellants alleged the respondent breached the 1999 agreement, causing losses, and claimed special damages of over UGX 404 million for unpaid sums, lost business and future profits. The trial judge held the relationship was governed by the 2005 MDC agreement, which had rendered the 1999 agreement inoperative, but found the respondent terminated without the required seven days' written notice. He awarded general damages of UGX 5,000,000 and special damages of UGX 5,520,000 for 600 crates ordered, paid for and admittedly received, declining the remaining special damages claims. The appellants appealed the refusal to award the further special damages for lost revenue and income.

Issues

  1. Whether the trial judge erred in holding that no evidence was adduced to support the appellants' claim for special damages for lost revenue and income.
  2. Whether the trial judge properly evaluated the evidence on record regarding lost income and revenue, given that the audited accounts were in the name of Bombo Wholesalers and not Top Bombo Wholesalers.

Orders

  • Appeal dismissed with costs.

Rules and key headnotes

Damages — Special Damages — Requirement of Specific Pleading and Strict Proof
Special damages must be specifically pleaded and strictly proved by evidence both that the loss was incurred and that it was the direct result of the defendant's conduct; where no such proof is provided, the claim must be rejected.
Evidence — Proof of Loss — Documents Relating to Distinct Legal Entities
Where a suit is brought in the name of one entity, documentary evidence of payments or losses bearing the names of separate legal entities cannot establish the suing entity's claim, and an assertion that distinct entities are the same is indefensible absent proof.
Damages — Loss of Future Earnings — Speculative Claims
A claim for loss of future earnings projected over a period of years, calculated by multiplying an unproven monthly gross profit figure, is purely speculative and cannot be awarded where the claimant fails to adduce evidence of how the figure was derived.
Contract Law — Termination of Agreement on Dissolution of Partnership — Cause of Action
Where an agency agreement provides for automatic termination on dissolution of the contracting partnership, the agreement ends with the partnership, and an action premised on that terminated agreement for events occurring afterwards cannot succeed.

Cases cited (5)

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.

Full judgment

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

Mustapha Ramathan Ta Bombo Wholesalers and Another v Century Bottling Company Limited (Civil Appeal 40 of 2010) [2019] UGCA 2096 (19 August 2019)
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.