Mwangi Muraguri v Kamara Rukenya [1983] KECA 78 (KLR)

The High Court's broad remark that the magistrate had no jurisdiction to determine a boundary dispute was misleading. Mr Chakava demonstrated that the ouster in section 21(4) bites only where the Registrar has not determined the boundary. Since the Registrar had been invited to determine the boundary and had done so under section 21(2), the trial court was clothed with jurisdiction as far as the plaint went, and could hear the dispute under section 159 of the Act.

The magistrate took up the defence that the Registrar had wrongly sited the 1959 boundary and concluded the proper line was at the defendant's fence. That was tantamount to the court determining the boundary without the Registrar. The courts must accept the decision of the Land Registrar once given, and any challenge to the correctness of that boundary was not justiciable before the trial court. The High Court came to the right conclusion on this point, though not on the basis of section 149.

Hancox JA expressly declined to endorse the learned judge's reliance on section 149 of the Act, and the court was not called upon to consider the operation of that section or the prerogative orders mooted on first appeal. The key to the High Court's judgment was the remark that the parties must recognise the boundary fixed by the Land Registrar, which was the correct disposition notwithstanding the judge's imprecise reasoning.