Philip Anania Masasi versus Returning Officer Njombe North constituency and Two others; MISC Civil Cause No 7 of 1995: High Court of Tanzania at Songea (Unreported).
- Civil Procedure
- Verification Clause – Failure to disclose source of information in an affidavit – Effect.
- Verification clause – defective verification- Effect.
- Parties – whether a person not party to a suit can be affected.
- Parties – who may be joined as a party of legal proceeding?
- Rules of procedure – whether may govern the cause of justice.
- Pleadings – sufficient particulars must be made.
- Pleadings – defective pleadings- remedies available to the opposite party.
Held:-
(i) A pleader having stated that what he has stated is true to the best of his own knowledge, no obligation rested in him to say anything further in the clause. If the verification is false, it can be validly pursued only during the cross-examination at the trial.
(ii) Defects in verification do not make a pleading void; it is a mere irregularity which is curable by amendment. “The wages of procedural sin should never be the death of rights.”
(iii) It is a common law general rule that no person is to be adversely affected by a judgment in a legal proceeding to which he was not a party; because of the injustice of deciding an issue against him in his absence.
(iv) It is the duty of the Court to prevent its procedures being used to create injustice. Procedurals rules are meant to sub serve and not govern cause of justice.
(v) To be joined as a party to a legal preceding a person must have a legal interest, that is to say, an interest which the law recognises in the subject – matter of the proceedings.
(vi) A party to a legal action is entitled in law to have the case against him presented in an intelligible form so that he may be able to prepare himself to meet it.
(vii) When a pleading of a party is defective, the following remedies are available to the opposite party
(a) An order requiring the party to give particulars or further particulars;
(b) The objectionable portion or portions of the pleadings being struck out.
(c) Where the pleading is a plaint and it is defective for disclosing no cause of action rejection of the plaint.