Court halts hearing in war for a piece of Deloitte

Court of Appeal judge Sankale Ole Kantai. [Willis Awandu, Standard]

Court of Appeal has suspended the hearing of a case pitting audit firm Deloitte and Touche LLP and Amanha Bekele who was expelled as partner in May this year.

Appellate judges Sankale ole Kantai, Francis Tuiyott and Paul Gachoka unanimously agreed that if the case before the commercial court proceeds, it would jeopardise the arbitration process.

"We find that if the matter at the High Court proceeds when the applicants have invoked an arbitration agreement in terms of Section 6 of the Arbitration Act the appeal would be rendered nugatory as the parties would be robbed of the opportunity to resolve their dispute in an agreed way in terms of the arbitration agreement," the bench headed by Justice Kantai ruled.

Amanha sued the audit firm alongside co-partners Ann Muraya, Graeme Berry, Gladys Makumi, Doreen Mbogho, Arifa Sheikh, Fred Okwiri, Charles Luo and Bernadette Wahogo, seeking to be reinstated.

He asked the court to suspend the expulsion and block the other partners from denying him his monthly drawings.

Justice Nixon Sifuna granted him the orders.

Aggrieved, Deloitte and the eight other partners moved to the Court of Appeal, arguing that Prof Sifuna failed to factor in that the partnership relationship between Amanha and other partners had broken down.

They asserted that the order was equal to frogging a dead horse.

The Court of Appeal heard that Deloitte and the remaining partners would suffer losses if Amanha was allowed to access partnership drawings as he had already been expelled for breach of the partnership agreement.

They stated that Justice Sifuna ought to have ordered Amanha to exhaust the arbitration agreement before approaching the court.

Their lawyer Michi Kirimi argued that Justice Sifuna erred by failing to refer the case for arbitration.

She further argued that Amanha is a foreigner and he had not given any guarantee that he would be able to reimburse damages in case the appeal succeeds.

Amanha opposed the application. He argued that he has never been furnished with the partnership documents save for a partnership manual.

He claimed that he had asked for those documents in 2016.

Meanwhile, Amanha argued that the expulsion was illegal as Deloitte and his co-partners had no powers to remove him.

His lawyer Emmanuel Eredi urged the Court of Appeal not to give the audit firm and the other partners audience as they had filed another application to review the orders before the commercial court.