High Court Ruling That Will Slow The Wheels Of Justice From Moving Fast For Ordinary Victims
The recent decision by the High Court of Kenya barring the Small Claims Court from hearing road traffic accident personal injury claims has landed like a quiet bomb in the justice system, with consequences that will be felt most painfully by those least equipped to absorb delay, cost, and procedural complexity.
On the surface, the ruling reads like a technical clarification of jurisdiction, a tidy exercise in statutory interpretation that appears orderly and principled. But beneath that legal polish lies a social reality that is far messier, harsher, and deeply unequal.
Road traffic accident injury claims are not abstract disputes between corporate giants. They are lived experiences of boda boda riders knocked off highways, pedestrians struck at unmarked crossings, matatu passengers injured in reckless overtakes, and low-income motorists navigating unforgiving roads.
These claims are often modest in monetary value but enormous in personal consequence. A broken leg, soft tissue injuries, lost income, medical bills, and months of pain can easily fall below the KES 1 million threshold while still pushing a household to the brink.
It is precisely for such disputes that the Small Claims Court was created. Speed, simplicity, low cost, and the ability to proceed without a lawyer were not incidental features; they were the very philosophy of the court.
By removing RTA personal injury cases from this forum, the ruling effectively strips thousands of injured Kenyans of the one judicial space that was structurally aligned with their economic reality.
The court further ordered that all pending RTA injury cases already before the Small Claims Court be transferred to the Magistrates’ Courts, a directive that sounds administratively neat but is operationally chaotic.
Anyone familiar with court registries knows that “transfer” means files moving physically and digitally, new case numbers, reallocation to magistrates, fresh scheduling, and often re-service of parties. Each step introduces delay, cost, and the risk of files going missing.
What was designed to conclude in sixty days now risks stretching into years, not because justice demands it, but because bureaucracy insists on it.
The most troubling aspect of the decision lies in its treatment of the Small Claims Act itself. The Act expressly allows the court to hear claims for compensation for personal injuries, with specific exclusions carefully listed by Parliament.
Road traffic accident injuries are not among those exclusions. There is no textual carve-out, no conditional limitation, and no insurer exception written into the statute.
Yet the judgment effectively reads in an exclusion by asserting that RTA injury claims were “never contemplated” by Parliament, a conclusion that sits uneasily with the plain language of the law.
When courts begin adding exclusions that the legislature did not enact, the line between interpretation and lawmaking becomes dangerously thin.
This approach invites uncertainty. If RTA injuries can be excluded without textual basis, what prevents future exclusions based on judicial intuition rather than statutory command?
The judgment leans heavily on the idea of “complexity,” suggesting that negligence, medical evidence, and insurer participation make RTA cases unsuitable for Small Claims Court.
But complexity is not a legal standard; it is a subjective assessment. Many cases heard daily in Small Claims Court involve intricate facts, contested liability, and technical evidence.
Assault claims can be complex. Psychological injury claims can be complex. Commercial disputes with multiple transactions and documents can be complex.
Yet complexity has never been a jurisdictional bar. Courts manage complexity through procedure, not exclusion.