Attorney General's case against ULS flops

By Michael Odeng 

THE hearing of the case in which the Attorney General, Peter Nyombi sued Uganda Law Society (ULS) over his illegal expulsion has failed to take-off before the civil division of the High Court. 

The case was adjourned to August 28, 2014 following the absence of the High Court judge Stephen Musota. The judges have convened at Imperial Hotel for the National Legal Conference. 

Nyombi filed the suit seeking injunction restraining the ULS from circulating the certificate of incompetence issued against him without cause and demanded a public apology from the lawyer’s body. 

That public apology should be published “under wide circulation for a period of three weeks both in print and broadcast media" according to the suit. 

He also wants the court to order ULS to pay him damages and the costs of the case. 

Other remedies Nyombi is seeking are; a court declaration that the ULS’ actions were illegal, completely outside its powers and void right from the beginning.

He also sought orders quashing the ULS resolutions and prohibiting the ULS from implementing them continuous circulation of the certificate of incompetence issued against him which he maintains were  void and unlawful.

City lawyer Jude Mbabaali and 15 other lawyers petitioned the ULS to call a general meeting to suspend Nyombi. 

They accused him of misadvising or failure to advise the Government against re-appointing Justice Benjamin Odoki as Chief Justice and Gen. Aronda Nyakairima as cabinet minister. 

They also accused him of poorly handing the oil case between one Severino Twinobusingye and the Attorney General.

They said that the Attorney General had turned hostile to the Parliament in court and “maliciously conceded the allegations against the House.  

They also accused him of giving unsolicited opinion to the Speaker condemning and castigating her for ruling to retain in Parliament, the MPs expelled from NRM.

In his application for judicial review of the ULS action filed on September 20,13, Nyombi said, that the ULS constituted itself into a court of law to determine without a reasoned judgment that his opinions were contrary to the law. 

Not only that, he complained, the ULS “were prosecutors and judges in their own cause, an act which was illegal.”

He said that moreover, he was not given a fair hearing which was a total violation of the inherent constitutional provisions on principals of natural justice.