STOP SEEING INTRUSIVE ADS, & HAVE PREMIUM FEATURES? Stop seeing intrusive ads and have a smoother reading experience, once you sign up on Judicial Poetry. Sign up now!

PARTY NOT SERVED ORIGINATING PROCESS CAN SET ASIDE CONCLUDED TRIAL

Reach more audience. Place advert here.

I need only say that this argument is, with respect, simplistic as the finality of a decision can only be predicated upon the decision on its merit and not where there has been no valid and competent trial, so to say. It is my view that where a party is not validly served the originating processes as is the case with appellants herein – a registered company, there cannot be said to have been a trial or hearing involving it. Such purported trial cannot in my view give birth to a final decision that is capable of stripping the lower court imbued with not only general powers, but special right of enforcing such breaches – of such rights. It is trite that where a party is not served an originating process the entire proceedings as against him is a nullity. He is entitled to have it set aside.

— Danjuma, JCA. Tony Anthony Nig. Ltd & Ors. v. NDIC (CA/L/630/2009 • 25 January 2011)

Was this dictum helpful?

SHARE ON

originating process

ORIGINATING PROCESSES SIGNED BY A LAW FIRM IS DEFECTIVE

In the case of CHIEF GABRIEL IGBINEDION & ANOR VS WATSON & SONS LTD (2018) 8 NWLR (Pt. 1621) at 381 letters “A” to “B”, the Court of Appeal stated the law as follows: “….. any originating process such as an application for a writ of summons or statement of claim signed by a law firm, as was the case here, would render the initiation of the case bad and the subsequent proceedings predicated on the mortally defective originating process would bring to grief the entire suit and render the decision or judgment and ruling arrived threat a null and void.”