The High Court in Mbale has ruled that the order granted by the deputy registrar his worship Samuel Kagoda in a matter in which siblings Paul Wanyoto Mugoya and Harriet Wanyoto against Lydia Mutende Wanyoto was ambiguous and didn’t specify what status quo to maintain.
And therefore, Lydia Wanyoto couldn’t be held in contempt of a Court order that was ambiguous and lacking in clarity.
Late last year, Lydia who is the chairperson of NRM Women League, was dragged her to court for allegedly disobeying a court order.
Paul Wanyoto Mugoya and Harriet Wanyoto Mabonga filed a case of contempt of court against their sister at Mbale High Court Division, having been granted an order maintaining the status quo from an application which sought an injunction restraining her from continuing to unilaterally invade, encroach or construct on a part of their ancestral property.
On September 16, the High Court Deputy Registrar, Moses Kagoda Ntende, issued an interim order maintaining the status quo by both parties on the suit land till the appeal and application is heard.
The land in question is comprised in FRV MBA 32 Folio 8, Plot 4213 Block 3 at Lumumba Village.
Mugoya and Mabonga want court to order Lydia.
Court documents indicated that on September 16, the land was not yet degraded, decimated, or otherwise damaged as complained off herein, for instance, a semi-permanent chain-link fence still stood and there was no boundary wall erected on the suit land.
They add that there was no grading done, no garden preparation, flowers planted and the applicants and other beneficiaries were still free to access the land to obtain food in the now destroyed garden or visit any of the graves or assemble as a family thereon.
However, on Wednesday the Mbale High Court judge Margaret Apiny ruled declining to punish Lydia Wanyoto citing vagueness of the Order issued by the High Court Registrar.
She said the Court should be seen reconciling the parties rather than setting them against each other in pursuit of costs awarded and declined to award any costs.
Our attempts to contact Hon.Wanyoto Lydia for a comment were futile as her known number was unreachable but Paul Wanyoto laughed off the set back as an inconsequential loss clearly stating that legal battles are not sprints but marathons and every legal point of Law will be canvassed to the highest Courts in the Land. Paul, an Advocate of the High Court strongly disagreed with the Judges reasoning.
“I make no order as to costs given that the parties are not only administrators of the estate but are siblings who are litigating over family property,” she ruled.