Court dismisses Patrick Bitature application

Court has dismissed an application filed by Patrick Bitature to put a temporary injunction on his properties that are in for auctioning.

In a ruling signed and read by Judge Stephen Mubiru, it stated, “In the result, I found that a prima facie case had not been established. There were no serious questions of law and fact to be tried by this court to justify the grant of a temporary injunction. The application was thus dismissed with costs to the respondents and the underlying suit was struck out with costs to the defendants.”

On basis of all the foregoing considerations, Judge Mubiru said, ” I found that this application and the underlying suit were entirely misconceived on account of the fact that they were instituted against agents of a known principal, and on ground that the matters placed in issue in the suit are already the subject 15
of a subsisting arbitral process. This court had on two occasions before already declared that it will not exercise jurisdiction over the matter in light of the submission to arbitration that is valid, binding, operative and enforceable. I found it unnecessary in the circumstances to consider the rest of the criteria for the grant of a temporary injunction.”

Having analysed pleadings filed and arguments advanced by counsel for the applicants in previous and current litigation over the same subject matter, as well as their answer filed in response to the invitation to arbitration, it appears to me that the applicants are labouring under an honest but mistaken belief that it was decided by the Civil Division of this Court in High Court Miscellaneous Cause No. 205 of 2022 that M/s Vantage Mezzanine Fund II Partnership does not exist. The failure to disabuse themselves  of that misconception has clouded their judgment so deeply that they have gone to great lengths to avoid any stance that has a semblance of recognising the existence of that entity. That, in my view, is the predominant reason, rather than a deliberate misuse of court process, that explains the current application.

Although I have not found clear evidence of an ulterior motive or purpose in the filing of this process, unfortunately, the misconceived application and the underlying suit have the 10
undesirable effect of delaying the delivery of justice.

Read whole ruling: 68 MA 0671 2022 Simba Properties Investment C Ltd v Robert Kirunda