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.

Allowing “complexity” to determine jurisdiction creates a slippery and dangerous precedent, one where access to justice depends on how overwhelmed or cautious a decision-maker feels in a particular case.

The ruling also prioritizes insurers’ operational needs, emphasizing time for medical reviews, verification, and expert reports.

Insurers undoubtedly have legitimate interests, but the justice system does not exist to optimize corporate convenience.

The Small Claims Court was intentionally designed to compress timelines, precisely because delay disproportionately harms injured and low-income litigants.

By privileging insurer timelines over claimant urgency, the ruling tilts the balance of justice away from the injured and toward the institutionally powerful.

The argument that allowing Small Claims Court jurisdiction would be discriminatory because it treats claims under KES 1 million differently from those above it misunderstands how judicial systems function.

Jurisdiction is defined by thresholds everywhere. Magistrates’ Courts, High Courts, and appellate courts all operate on monetary and subject-matter limits.

Differential treatment based on claim value is not discrimination; it is the architecture of an ordered legal system.

Ironically, the decision now creates a different form of inequality, where poor claimants must navigate slower, more expensive courts for the same injuries simply because of judicial reinterpretation.

The practical consequences are already unfolding. Magistrates’ Courts, already burdened with criminal trials, land disputes, family cases, and constitutional applications, will now absorb thousands of additional personal injury files.

Backlogs will grow. Hearing dates will be pushed further into the future. Legal costs will rise as self-representation becomes harder to sustain.

For many injured Kenyans, the choice will be stark: abandon the claim or sink deeper into debt to pursue it.

This is how rights die in practice, not through dramatic repeal, but through procedural friction that makes enforcement unbearable.

The Small Claims Court, meanwhile, loses a significant portion of its relevance, its promise quietly diminished by the removal of cases that defined its social purpose.

What remains is a court that is procedurally efficient but substantively constrained, efficient for disputes that already had alternatives.

The broader policy question cannot be ignored. Access to justice is not measured by doctrinal elegance but by whether ordinary people can realistically vindicate their rights.

This ruling may be tidy in theory, but on the ground it widens the justice gap between the insured and the injured, the resourced and the vulnerable.

Kenya’s roads are already deadly. Turning courtrooms into additional obstacles for victims compounds the harm.

If Parliament intended to exclude RTA personal injury claims from the Small Claims Court, it must say so clearly and openly, after public debate and impact assessment.

Until then, narrowing jurisdiction through judicial inference risks transforming access to justice into a privilege rather than a right.

Law does not exist in a vacuum. It operates in a society where time, money, and power are unevenly distributed.

When legal interpretation ignores that reality, it may win on paper while justice quietly loses on the ground.

This decision should spark urgent national conversation, not celebration, because when justice becomes slower and more expensive, it is not abstract doctrine that suffers, but real people with real injuries and real bills waiting to be paid.

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