Olang v Nuaga & others (Environment and Land Case 52 of 2019) [2026] KEELC 1202 (KLR)

The court held that with a final judgment in place there are no live proceedings into which a party could be joined. Section 80 of the Civil Procedure Act gives any aggrieved person an automatic right to apply for review, and an aggrieved party may instead appeal. Ordering joinder first would invert the proper sequence - placing the cart before the horse. The proposed interested parties' interests could be pursued through those statutory remedies without joinder.

Review is a statutory and narrow jurisdiction confined to discovery of new and important matter, error apparent on the face of the record, or other sufficient reason, brought without unreasonable delay. The 9th judgment debtor proprietor of the applicants participated in the trial until judgment, knew or ought to have known of the adjoining parcel, and no error apparent on the record was shown. Reliance on matters known since 1992 cannot amount to newly discovered evidence.

The court adopted the dictum in Arun C. Sharma v Ashana Raikundalia that any person claiming a legal or equitable interest in property attached in execution may lodge a written objection under Order 22 rule 51(1), bearing the burden of proving that interest. The court further found the applicants' parcel clearly different from the suit property and therefore incapable of being affected by the judgment, mooting the execution complaint.

Section 18(2) of the Land Registration Act 2012 bars the court from entertaining boundary disputes unless the boundaries have been determined in accordance with the Act. No application had been made to the Registrar to fix boundaries under Section 19, so the applicants could not confer on the court jurisdiction the statute places elsewhere. Directions on survey or boundary clarification were therefore unavailable.