The High Court has ordered a construction firm that was represented by Tumusiime, Kabega & Co. Advocates during a legal battle with DFCU to pay the law firm its legal fees.
The law firm had asked the court to allow it to formally pursue payment of its legal fees after the company allegedly failed to settle its bill.
The dispute dates back to 2015 when Wills International Engineers & Contractors hired Tumusiime, Kabega & Co. Advocates to represent it in a commercial dispute against DFCU Bank.
Acting on the company’s instructions, the lawyers filed a case in the High Court on December 3, 2015.
Judgment in that case was delivered on August 28, 2017, in favour of DFCU, and Wills International instructed the same lawyers to challenge it in the Court of Appeal, which it did.
On February 24, 2022, the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Wills International and Tumusiime, Kabega & Co. Advocates sought payment for the professional services they had provided during the long legal battle.
According to the court record, the law firm served the company with a demand notice and an advocate-client bill of costs on December 9, 2024.
However, Wills International did not pay the money.
The lawyers told the court that more than 50 days had passed after the bill was served, but the respondents had failed, neglected, or refused to settle the Advocate-client bill or cause taxation thereof.”
Because of this, the law firm returned to court seeking permission to have its bill of costs formally assessed and enforced.
George William Kiyega, the managing director of Wills International, represented himself in the case and opposed the application.
He admitted that the law firm had represented the company in the earlier dispute but argued that the lawyers should recover their legal costs from DFCU Bank instead.
Kiyega pointed to a letter dated March 11, 2024, in which the company asked the lawyers to pursue the costs from the bank because the Court of Appeal had ordered that costs be placed on DFCU in parts of the earlier case.
He also claimed that some of the costs had already been taxed and stood at about Shs 77 million.
Because of this, Kiyega argued that the application had been brought in bad faith and should be dismissed.
Tumusiime, Kabega & Co. Advocates rejected this argument and insisted that it had a professional relationship with the company and was entitled to be paid for the work it carried out.
The lawyers argued that even when a court orders another party to pay costs in a case, that does not remove the client’s responsibility to pay their own advocates for services rendered.
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Justice Susan Abinyo agreed with the law firm.
After reviewing the evidence, she concluded that there was clearly a lawyer-client relationship between the parties and that the law firm had provided legal services to the company.
She said Wills International’s argument that DFCU Bank should pay the lawyers directly was legally wrong because legal fees are normally owed by the client who hired the lawyer.
“The respondents’ contention that the costs are to be paid by DFCU Bank is misconstrued,” she ruled.
Justice Abinyo also found that Tumusiime, Kabega & Co. Advocates had followed the correct procedure by serving the company with a signed bill of costs and waiting for the legally required time before filing the application.
However, the court did not award a specific amount of money at this stage.
Instead, Justice Abinyo granted the law firm permission to file its advocate-client bill of costs and ordered that the bill must be taxed.
She also ordered that the law firm should receive the costs of the application.
