Angela Mulwa t/a Mulwa & Partners Advocates v Mokoosio (Civil Application E733 of 2024) [2025] KECA 583 (KLR)

The Court distinguished between the main judgment and the stay ruling. The applicant's grounds and 21-ground draft memorandum were directed at the judgment enforcing the professional undertakings, not the ruling granting conditional stay. To impeach the ruling, the applicant had to show the Judge abused her discretion in imposing the deposit condition, which was not demonstrated; counsel's submissions cannot substitute for evidence of arguability.

The stake is a money decree founded on the applicant's own professional undertakings, which she did not impugn. Monetary decrees are normally refundable if an appeal succeeds. Her confessed difficulty in raising the funds, given the undertakings, fuelled apprehension about her ability to pay, and cut against rather than for her. No special circumstances such as doubts about the judgment's regularity or the respondent's inability to repay were shown.

The Court noted that although its Rule 5(2)(b) jurisdiction is original and may be invoked notwithstanding a prior application to the High Court, the applicant chose to appeal the conditional-stay ruling. That choice needlessly multiplied causes, producing two substantive appeals from one controversy, and confined her to demonstrating arguability against the stay ruling alone. Strategic choices have consequences.

Counsel for the applicant conceded at the plenary hearing that the applicant is not a party to the arbitration between the respondent and HIMS Homes Limited before the arbitrator Collins Namachanja, nor had she applied to be enjoined. A stay of proceedings is directed at proceedings between parties before the Court; a stranger to the arbitration cannot obtain such a stay.