Residents of Kayole's disputed Nyama Villa Estate have lost a bid to stop their eviction from the land.
Justice Bernard Eboso dismissed two applications by 23 residents and the Nairobi County Assembly because no formal appeal had been made.
Eboso said the residents are yet to challenge the court’s ruling at the Court of Appeal and have disobeyed orders for the last five years
Justice John Mutungi ruled in 2014 that the land belonged Muthithi Investments which is owned by city trader Mike Maina.
The court directed the residents to vacate the property within 90 days.
The second phase of eviction by Muthithi Investments on the disputed 20-acre was halted by court order in 2018.
Justice Eboso said the petitioners had sought the protection of the court whose orders they have chosen to disobey. He termed it a blatant abuse of the court process.
“The court would be appending a thumb of approval to impunity if it were grant a stay order to a litigant who has blatantly elected to deliberately disobey a court order that he has not challenged through an appeal,” the judge ruled.
The judge dismissed Nairobi county government's request to be enjoined in the case as the original owner of the property.
He wondered why the application by the county was brought almost five years after the judgment.
“To qualify to be joined as a party to a suit in which judgment has already been rendered, an application is required to demonstrate that it was a necessary party and was improperly omitted from the proceedings,” the court ruled.
In the case, the residents argued that Muthithi began evictions without complying with the law requiring that notice be in writing and placed at five conspicuous places.
They argued that in the case of a large group of people, the notice must be published in a newspaper of a wide circulation.
However, Muthithi argued that the application was an abuse of the court process as a representative of the residents fully participated in the proceedings leading to the judgment.
(edited by o. owino)
