PAUL MUTHUITA V. WANOE

JUDGMENT

The three respondents, who are the mother and two younger brothers of the appellant, filed a suit against the appellant in the Resident Magistrate’s Court at Embu. The subject matter of the dispute was a parcel of land of some 1.96 hectares known as Inoi/Ndimi Parcel Number 14 (herein referred to as the “suit land”). The main issue raised before the Resident Magistrate by the respondents as plaintiffs in the suit was whether or not the appellant defendant, who had become the registered proprietor of the suit land, held that land in trust for himself, his mother and his two brothers.

In their plaint the plaintiffs averred that Paul Muthuita, the father of the brothers and husband of their mother, who died in 1954 before land consolidation commenced, was possessed of some fragments of land which after his death were consolidated, demarcated and registered as the suit land. As Paul Muthuita had died, his widow, the first plaintiff, caused the suit land to be registered in the defe…