Official Receiver as Trustee of Kishan Singh Sandhu v. Mokund Ban Aggarwal, Civ. App. 1-A-68, 16/11/68, Platt j.

Official Receiver as Trustee of Kishan Singh Sandhu v. Mokund Ban Aggarwal, Civ. App. 1-A-68, 16/11/68, Platt j.

The applicant seeks an order to extend the time in which to appeal to the Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa. He had taken 10 days to instruct his lawyer to lodge an appeal. Notice of appeal was then filed and under rule 54 of the East African Court of Appeal Rules he then had 60 days in which to appeal. Counsel immediately bespoke copies of judgment, decree and record. The court took 37 days to prepare the record, leaving 23 days for counsel to prepare his document, which included a number of complicated documents of account. The respondent objected to the extension on the grounds that there was no proper reason for the delay and that the nature of the case and reasons for appealing were not stated.

Held: (1) The lack of a satisfactory explanation as to the delay is only fatal in cases of excessive delay.

            (2) It is unreasonable, in computing the time available to the advocate for compiling his documents, to take into account the period between judgment and his receiving instructions to appeal. It is reasonable that counsel should not waste time in preparing documents which might never be needed.

            (3) “The object of including r. 9 in the rules of court is to ensure that the strict enforcement of the limitations of time for filing documents prescribed by the rules shall not result in a manifest denial of justice. It is thus essential, that an application for an extension of time r.9 should support his application by sufficient statement of the nature of the judgment ad of his reason for desiring to appeal against it to enable the court to determine whether or not a refusal of the application would appear to cause injustice.” Failure to do so, however, does not fetter the discretion of the judge. In cases where there is no such supporting statement adduced, if it appears that the cause of delay is substantially attributable to the court, and on the facts the delay of the applicant is not unreasonable, then the application may be allowed. (Citing Bhainchand Bhagwanji Shah v. Jamnadas & Co. Ltd. [1959] E.A. 838, and Bhatt v. Tejwant Singh [1962] E.A. 497) Application Granted.