Rok Industries Limited v Wambua (Appeal 85 of 2023) [2024] KEELRC 715 (KLR)

The court traced the chronology: WIBA commenced 2nd June 2008; the High Court (Ojwang J) declared Sections 16, 23(1) and 52 unconstitutional on 4th March 2009; the Court of Appeal reversed on 17th November 2017 and the Supreme Court affirmed on 3rd December 2019. The superior courts only directed that pre-WIBA claims proceed under legitimate expectation, leaving claims filed between the two decisions unclear. The Chief Justice's Gazette practice directions resolved this by directing such claims to proceed to conclusion. The respondent's 2017 claim fell squarely in that window, so the magistrate correctly declined to strike out the plaint.

The appellant argued that jurisdiction is donated only by the Constitution or statute and that the Chief Justice's Gazette Notice could not confer jurisdiction. The court nonetheless upheld the ruling by reference to the Chief Justice's directions, aligning them with the legitimate expectation doctrine applied by the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, and treated the practice directions as consistent with the superior courts' holdings rather than as an independent source of jurisdiction.

The court adopted the classic first-appeal standard: reconsider and evaluate the evidence and draw its own conclusions, while making allowance for not having seen or heard the witnesses. It then identified the sole substantive issue as jurisdiction of the trial court over the WIBA claim.