Justice Stephen Mubiru rules that Roko accepted and installed the doors, then failed to pay the supplier in full; Attorney General escapes liability because the government was not party to the contract.
A dispute over thousands of doors installed at Mulago National Referral Hospital has ended with a High Court order requiring Roko Construction Limited to pay more than $1.39 million to Assa Abloy (U) Limited, after a judge rejected the construction company’s attempts to challenge the quantity supplied, question the delivery records and raise allegations of defective goods.
In a judgment delivered on October 16, 2026, Justice Stephen Mubiru of the High Court’s Commercial Division in Kampala ruled that Roko had failed to settle the outstanding balance for doors, accessories and ironmongery supplied and installed at the hospital.
The court ordered Roko to pay US$1,391,667.58, together with interest at 9 per cent per annum from August 20, 2020, until payment in full. The company was also ordered to pay the costs of the suit.
The case arose from a supply arrangement under which Assa Abloy provided steel doors and related fittings for the hospital project. What began as a commercial transaction eventually became a dispute over the number of doors delivered, the reliability of shipping documents, the condition of the goods and whether the supplier had attempted to recover unpaid doors after the relationship deteriorated.
At the centre of the case was a straightforward question: had Roko received and installed the goods for which Assa Abloy was demanding payment?
Justice Mubiru concluded that the evidence, including Roko’s own payments, witness testimony and communications from a senior company official, supported the supplier’s account.
“A party’s partial payment amounts to an admission of the contract’s existence,” the judge wrote.
He added that Roko’s position was undermined by its own conduct during the transaction and the evidence presented at trial.
“The 1st defendant’s denial of the contract’s existence is contradicted by its own pleadings, its own witnesses, its own payments, and its own counsel’s concessions.”
The ruling followed a series of orders and purchase requests issued during the construction of Mulago National Referral Hospital.
According to the judgment, the initial requisition, dated June 30, 2017, covered 2,398 steel door sets valued at US$1,567,188. The order was later revised to cover 2,716 doors worth US$2,216,324.61.
A further purchase order, dated January 18, 2019, covered ironmongery valued at US$365,342.97.
The total value of the doors, accessories and ironmongery supplied and installed between August 31, 2017, and October 31, 2018, was US$2,581,667.58.
Roko made payments totalling US$1.19 million, leaving the balance claimed by Assa Abloy at US$1,391,667.58. The judgment described the outstanding amount as payment for 985 doors.
Roko disputed the quantities and argued that the number of doors it had ordered and paid for was lower than the supplier’s claim. It also challenged the delivery records and sought to undermine the evidence used to establish the cumulative number of goods supplied.
But the court found that the documentary evidence could not fairly be assessed by examining individual shipments in isolation.
The records showed that 63 consignments passed through Uganda Revenue Authority clearance between November 2017 and January 2019. Roko relied on individual shipping documents to contest the quantities claimed by Assa Abloy.
Justice Mubiru rejected that approach, explaining that documents relating to separate shipments could not necessarily establish the total quantity supplied over the entire period.
“With 63 consignments over a period of more than a year, individual shipping documents would naturally reflect only the contents of a single shipment, not the cumulative total.”
The court’s assessment also drew on testimony from people who had worked on the hospital project.
Wakoli Jackson, Roko’s site clerk of works, testified that Assa Abloy “began supplying around the year 2018 and installation began with Block ‘A’ all the way through to Block ‘K.’”
The judge found that the testimony did not deny the supply and installation of the doors.
Another witness, assistant architect Mugumya Geralds, confirmed that Assa Abloy “supplied and installed doors and door frames.”
Their evidence was significant because Roko’s defence challenged the supplier’s account of the transaction even as witnesses connected to the construction project confirmed that the doors had been supplied and installed.
A joint verification exercise in August 2020 became another important piece of evidence.
The exercise followed a meeting convened by the Minister of Health on July 29, 2020, to address the dispute. On August 20, the parties undertook a verification process concerning the doors supplied to the project.
Roko later questioned the status of the checklist used during the exercise, arguing that it had not been signed and disputing its participation in the verification.
However, the court considered emails sent on August 20, 21 and 25, 2020, by Roko’s operations manager, Beyers Strydom. The communications confirmed the quantity of 2,716 doors and the total value of US$2,581,667.58.
Justice Mubiru found that Strydom was a senior officer whose conduct could be attributed to the company.
“The 1st defendant cannot now disclaim the acts of its own senior officer,” the judge wrote, particularly in light of the circumstances in which the verification had been conducted under ministerial direction.
The finding weakened Roko’s attempt to distance itself from the verified quantities and value of the supplies.
The company also raised concerns about the quality of the doors, alleging that some of the goods were defective or did not comply with the required specifications.
The court, however, found serious evidential problems with the defects report relied upon by Roko. The document was unsigned, its authorship had not been established, and its evidential basis was uncertain.
Justice Mubiru described it as “an unsigned, unauthenticated document of unknown authorship” and said it had “minimal, if any, evidential value.”
The judge also noted that the alleged defects had not been included in Roko’s pleadings and were instead introduced during the trial.
Raising such a defence at that stage risked turning the proceedings into what the judge called “trial by ambush.”
The ruling also considered the legal requirements for rejecting goods under the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act.
The judge explained that complaining about a product does not, by itself, amount to a clear rejection of the goods, particularly where the buyer has retained and installed them.
“Mere complaint about the goods does not constitute a clear and unequivocal act of rejection.”
Roko had retained the doors, used them in the hospital project, made partial payments and promised further payments. In the circumstances, the court found that the company’s defective-goods defence could not defeat Assa Abloy’s claim.
“Therefore, the 1st defendant’s defence of defective or non-compliant goods is not available,” Justice Mubiru ruled.
Another disputed issue concerned Roko’s allegation that Assa Abloy had repossessed 1,358 doors.
The supplier’s managing director, Francesca Maniatis, told the court that the company had threatened to withhold doors for which it had not been paid. But the doors had already been installed and could not be removed.
The judge distinguished between a threat to withhold unpaid goods and proof that installed doors had actually been taken away.
“The 1st defendant conflates a threat to withhold unpaid goods with an actual repossession of installed goods,” Justice Mubiru wrote.
The court found no evidence that the doors had physically been removed from the hospital.
Instead, the evidence showed that the supplier had identified the unpaid doors and demanded payment for them.
“It establishes only that the plaintiff identified the unpaid doors and demanded payment,” the judge said.
The judgment also drew a legal distinction between Roko’s contractual obligations and those of the government.
Assa Abloy had sought relief against both Roko and the Attorney General, but the court found that the government was not a party to the supply contract. The government had contracted Roko for construction work, while Roko separately engaged Assa Abloy to supply and install the doors.
The fact that the goods had been installed at a public hospital did not, by itself, make the government liable for the debt.
“The mere fact that the doors, accessories, and ironmongery were installed at a facility operated by the 2nd defendant is not, by itself, sufficient to sustain a claim against it,” the judge wrote.
The court considered section 64(3) of the Contracts Act and found that it could not be used to impose contractual obligations on a party that had not signed the agreement.
The provision, the judge explained, was “structured as a sword for the third party, not as a basis for imposing obligations on a non-signatory.”
The government was, at most, an incidental beneficiary of the contract between Roko and Assa Abloy. The court consequently dismissed the suit against the Attorney General, with costs.
That left Roko solely responsible for the outstanding contractual payment.
Although Assa Abloy had sought compensation arising from the delayed payment, the judge declined to award general damages in addition to the outstanding balance and interest.
Justice Mubiru found that the loss established by the evidence was financial and could be quantified. The interest award was intended to compensate the supplier for the period during which it had been deprived of its money.
“The plaintiff not having proved any other loss apart from the delayed payment, in the circumstances, an additional award of general damages would be tantamount to overcompensation,” the judge wrote.
The court settled on an annual interest rate of 9 per cent, running from the joint verification conducted on August 20, 2020, until the debt is paid.
“In exercise of its discretion, this Court considers a rate of 9% per annum from the date of joint verification, i.e. 20th August, 2020 until payment in full to be just, reasonable and adequate compensation for the period the defendant has kept the plaintiff out of its money.”
The final orders awarded Assa Abloy US$1,391,667.58 against Roko Construction Limited, together with interest at 9 per cent per annum from August 20, 2020, until payment in full, and the costs of the suit.
The claim against the Attorney General was dismissed with costs.
The judgment brings a close to a dispute that turned on whether a construction company could avoid paying the full price of goods that the court found had been supplied and installed at one of Uganda’s major public hospitals.
For Assa Abloy, the immediate outcome is a judgment for the unpaid balance and interest accumulated over several years. For Roko, the ruling leaves the company liable for the outstanding amount, while the government has been released from the claim because it was not a party to the supply agreement.
