Meis Industries Ltd and 2 Others versus Twiga Bank Corp; Misc Commercial Cause No. 243 of 2015: High Court of Tanzania (Commercial Division) at Dar es Salaam (Unreported).
- Civil procedure
- Extension of time – sufficient cause must be shown.
- Extension of time – what amounts to sufficient cause?
- Discretion- Court’s discretion – when the matter is within the discretion of the court sufficient materials are needed.
Held:-
(i) An application for extension of time is entirely in the discretion of the Court to grant or to refuse it, and that extension of time may only be granted where it has been sufficiently established that the delay was with sufficient cause.
(ii) What constitutes reasonable or sufficient cause has not been defined under the section because that being a matter for the courts discretion cannot be laid down by any hard and fast rules but to be determined by reference to all the circumstances of each particular case. (Cited Emmanuel Billinge versus Praxeda Ogweyo & Another, Misc Application No 168 of 2012).
(iii) When the question is within the discretion of the court, an applicant must place before the court material which will move the court to exercise its judicial discretion in order to extend the time limited by the rules.
(iv) Though the court should no doubt give a liberal interpretation to the words ‘sufficient cause’ its interpretation must be in accordance with judicial principles. If the appellant has a good case on the merit but is out of time and has no valid excuse for the delay, the court must guard itself against the danger of being led away by sympathy, and the appeal should be dismissed as time barred, even at the risk of injustice and hardship to the appellant. (Cited Daphne Parry v. Murray Alexander Carson (1963) 1 EA 546 at 549).