Judgment of the Court
Delivered by
Eso J.S.C
In this matter, there were two applications before the Court. We dealt with both on 13th June and reserved our reasons for the decisions we took in both. It would be better to go through each motion as one is sequel to the other.
As a preliminary, it is necessary to state few facts. The plaintiffs to the action are-
George Njokanma;
Amolo Onwugbenu; and
Anthony Ogbogu.
They took the action in a representative capacity “for themselves and on behalf of Ogbeide Family”. The action was against
Okwonkwo Okonji;
George Nwanze Okobi; and
Onochi P. Eseji.
These were sued in a representative capacity “for themselves and on behalf of Umuodogun Family Ogboli Ibusa”. Indeed they were “substituted as such for the original defendants”, who had died. These original defendants died one after the other and the last of them died on 7th December, 1988. It was not until 21st March, 1989 that an application was made to substitute the present defendants for those deceased original defendants.
But the matter is not as straight-forward as all that, for, on 13th February, 1989, that is five weeks before that application for the substitution of the defendants, the plaintiffs had filed an application seeking an order to strike out the defendants’ notice of appeal to this Court on the ground of abuse of process. That abuse was stated in what the plaintiffs stipulated as is-sues for determination to wit.
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2.1 How does the law view the posture of an action when it is brought against multiple defendants and all of such defendants die during the pendency of the action and the cause of action survives their death?
