Likizo Homes Housing Cooperative Society & another v Ibrahim; Hassan (Proposed Interested Party) (Environment & Land Case 829 of 2017) [2025] KEELC 1026 (KLR)

The court applied the Supreme Court's criteria in Muruatetu and Methodist Church in Kenya v Fugicha, which require an identifiable personal stake, demonstration of prejudice from non-joinder, and proposed submissions that are not a mere replication of the principal parties' case. Because the suit had already been concluded by consent judgment, there were no submissions the Applicant could legitimately make. An interested party may not introduce new issues or seek substantive orders, and joinder would therefore be an ineffective, vain order.

The court reasoned that an interested party's role is confined to the issues as framed between the principal parties and that such a party cannot seek substantive orders or file pleadings. Since the consent judgment was entered between the principal parties and the Applicant was never party to it, he is a stranger to that judgment and cannot use an interested-party joinder as a vehicle to review, vary or set it aside. His grievances over the suit plots were held to belong to separate litigation in other suits.

The 2nd Plaintiff raised a Notice of Preliminary Objection dated 24th May 2024 invoking Section 7 of the Civil Procedure Act on res judicata and the principle that litigation must come to an end. The court's determination does not include a discrete ruling on that objection; instead the applications were dismissed in their entirety on the basis that joinder would serve no purpose. The objection was thus not expressly upheld or determined on its own terms.