Court dismisses appeal by State questioning power of judge

A THREE Judge Supreme Court bench has dismissed an appeal by the state (and its parties) questioning the power of a single Supreme Court Judge to hear and determine an application for the dismissal of a leave to appeal application for want of prosecution.
The bench comprising Justices John Logan, Teresa Berrigan and Nicholas Miviri, ruled in favour of the respondent Wamu Abari (and others) against appellant’s Willie Gumaim, Winnie Henao, Sam Inguba and the State.
Justice Logan delivered the ruling on behalf of the bench on Friday.
On Oct 14, 2016, the State and its parties (State parties) applied for leave to appeal against an interlocutory judgement made on Sept 26, 2016, in a National Court case between Wamu Abari and 541 parties (Abari parties) and state parties (writs proceedings).
The court gave judgement against the State parties on liability and made an award of damages in favour of the Abari parties.
The State parties then filed an appeal against that judgement on Feb 28, 2017, (writ proceedings).
On March 6, 2017, the Abari parties appealed against the judgement given in the writ proceedings challenging the quantity of the damages award made to them, which is still pending.
On Feb 8, 2018, the Abari parties filed an application seeking an order that the State parties’ leave to appeal application be dismissed for want of prosecution (want of prosecution application).
In turn, the State parties applied orally for the dismissal of the want of prosecution application (dismissal application) before a single Supreme Court (SC) judge on 20 Jun 2019.
At that time, the State parties questioned whether a single judge of the SC had powers to dismiss an application for leave to appeal for want of prosecution.
The single judge concluded that a single judge of the SC had powers to dismiss the want of prosecution application.
In doing so, the single judge also dismissed the State parties’ dismissal application.
In their appeal, the State parties submitted to the SC judges nominating section 5 of the SC Act 1975 as the source of the full court’s jurisdiction to hear their application.
They also sought section 10 of the SC Act questioning whether it was the source of jurisdiction for the single judge to hear and determine the want of prosecution application.
The Judges ruled that section 10 (2) of the SC Act envisages that a single judge may hear and determine not just, materially, a leave to appeal application itself, but also applications that are in relation to that applications.
The judges also upheld the single judge’s decision to dismiss the State parties’ dismissal application.
“The learned primary judge, sitting alone, had jurisdiction to hear and determine the want of prosecution application,” the three bench judge ruled.
“The fate of that application remains to be determined on a date to be fixed.” The State parties will pay costs to the Abari parties.