Wakilii

Twed Property Development Limited v Uganda Investment Authourity and 2 Others (Miscellaneous Cause No. 299 of 2020)

High Court · [2021] UGHCCD 92 · 2021 Application Dismissed AI-generated summary ↓ Download Pin to watchlist Add to matter
Jurisdiction
Uganda
Case Type
Application for judicial review challenging 1st respondent's decision to withdraw and reallocate industrial park land after lease expiry
Decision
Application for judicial review dismissed as not amenable to judicial review — applicant's remedies lie in ordinary civil suit for breach of contract

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

Held that an application for judicial review challenging the Uganda Investment Authority's refusal to renew an expired industrial park lease and subsequent reallocation of land is not amenable to judicial review. The applicant's rights arose from a concluded lease agreement creating private law contractual obligations enforceable only by ordinary civil suit, not through judicial review. The doctrine of legitimate expectation has no application where a concluded contract has expired and been breached by the lessee. Judicial review is confined to public law matters and is inappropriate where there is another field of law governing the situation. Application dismissed.

Outcome

Application for judicial review dismissed as not amenable to judicial review — applicant's remedies lie in ordinary civil suit for breach of contract

Facts

The applicant was allocated 5 acres of industrial park land by Uganda Investment Authority in 2011 and executed a 5-year lease on 20 June 2014 expiring 20 June 2019. The lease was erroneously issued in the name of a different entity. The applicant requested rectification but encountered difficulties including squatter occupation, lack of access roads, and delays in obtaining permission to develop. The applicant applied for change of user terms and on 27 September 2017 was requested to return original lease documents for processing, but renewal never materialised. Uganda Investment Authority's Board withdrew the lease allocation in May 2018 for failure to meet development conditions, then reinstated it for 6 months conditional on commencement of construction, but the lease expired on 20 June 2019 without construction. In March 2020 the Board refused renewal and subsequently allocated 3 acres to Victoria Nile Plastics Limited and 2 acres to Jerryfa Limited. The applicant claimed to have invested UGX 533,698,309 in preparatory works including compensating squatters, survey, excavation and land grading, creating value of UGX 819,501,900.

Issues

  1. Whether the present application for judicial review was filed out of time as against the 2nd Respondent.
  2. Whether the 1st Respondent's decision to grant leases to the 2nd and 3rd Respondents on the suit land that was in occupation of the Applicant is amenable to judicial review.
  3. Whether the 1st Respondent breached principles of natural justice and committed procedural impropriety in granting leases on the suit land occupied by the Applicant to the 2nd and 3rd Respondents.
  4. Whether the 1st Respondent acted in a manner to create a legitimate expectation in the mind of the Applicant's management that it was entitled to an amended lease.

Orders

  • Application dismissed.
  • No order as to costs.

Rules and key headnotes

Judicial Review — Amenability — Public Law versus Private Law — Lease Agreements with Statutory Bodies
Judicial review is a process by which courts exercise supervisory jurisdiction over the activities of public authorities in the field of public law and operates only in the field of public law. Where the subject-matter of a challenge involves a concluded lease agreement between an applicant and a statutory body creating private law contractual obligations, the dispute is not amenable to judicial review regardless that one party is a public body, and the applicant's remedies lie in ordinary civil proceedings for breach of contract.
Administrative Law — Statutory Bodies — Nature of Acts — Contractual Transactions Distinguished from Statutory Functions
Not every act of a statutory body involves an exercise of statutory power. Statutory bodies like private parties have power to contract or deal with property and such activities may not raise issues of public law. Where the terms of a contract with a statutory body are not fixed by statute and the duty does not create public law obligations, the liability of the statutory body in contractual matters is the same as that of a private person enforceable in ordinary claims and not through judicial review.
Administrative Law — Legitimate Expectation — Inapplicability to Concluded Contracts — Expired Leases
The doctrine of legitimate expectation has no application in relation to a dispute arising out of a contract qua contract. Once a contract is concluded, any expectation comes to an end and thereafter the parties are bound only by the terms of the contract. Where a lease has expired following glaring breaches by the lessee, there can be no legitimate expectation that the lessee would be allowed to continue with the contract or that the contract would be renewed.
Judicial Review — Scope — Remedy of Last Resort — Availability of Alternative Remedies
Judicial review should be a remedy of last resort and is inappropriate where there is another field of law governing the situation. Where an applicant seeks damages for alleged breach of contractual obligations arising from an expired lease agreement, the proper remedy is an ordinary civil suit for compensation and not judicial review.

Legislation cited (12)

Cases cited (5)

  • Nazarali Punjwani v Kampala District Land Board and Another (HCCS No. 7 of 2005)
  • Cocks v Thanet District Council [1983] 2 AC 286
  • Arua Park Operators and Market Vendors Cooperative Society Limited v Arua Municipal Council (Miscellaneous Cause No. 3 of 2016)
  • Uganda Taxi Operators and Drivers Association v KCCA and Another (Miscellaneous Application No. 137 of 2011)
  • Raj Chowdhury v Union of India, [2000] AIR Cal 232

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.

Twed Property Development Limited v Uganda Investment Authourity and 2 Others (Miscellaneous Cause No. 299 of 2020) [2021] UGHCCD 92 (6 August 2021)
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.