CIVIL LITIGATION


Our Advocates have distinguished themselves as precedent setting lawyers in our law courts. For example, we conducted the prosecution of Civil Appeal Number 112 of 1997 at the Court of Appeal in which for the first time the court recognized that an amendment to The Contract Act introduced by the Attorney General did not come into effect despite wide belief to the contrary. This forced the Attorney General in 2002 to reintroduce the said amendment and those amendments are now law in this country.

Our firm is reputed for handling Public Procurement matters and in particular, advising parastatals on procurement procedures in accordance with the Public Procurement and Disposal Act of 2005, representing public and new private bodies in disputes before the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board. Our clients in this respect include the Kenya Airport Authority and the Catering Tourism Development Levy Trust and Awal Limited.

In a landmark decision by the Hon Justice Ringera, we stopped an arbitration proceedings before an arbitrator, Mr. Toghbor on the ground that no arbitration can be conducted before an arbitrator if the cause of action is statute barred and further where an allegation of fraud and statute limitation are raised, the arbitrator should lay down his tools for want of jurisdiction. This is a case with very wide legal ramifications especially in financial institutions. Our client escaped a net liability of Kshs 500 Million.

Our firm has through a series of cases involving Housing Finance Company of Kenya Limited established the law relating to Interest rates, Penalty rates and Default charges on firm legal grounds. We litigated these issues and in a series of judgments the court accepted our position that trade customs and usages do allow mortgage institutions to charge penalty and other types of interests.

We have conducted various litigations in the area of private international law, and in particular were the lead counsel in the precedent setting case involving Raytheon Aircraft manufactures and a local company in which the Court of Appeal held that the Kenyan courts will exercise jurisdiction (in a limited fashion) even when the parties have selected a specific forum and the law of another country.