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Whose Cylinder Just Died?

By Tim Munyi Mugo, Advocate* You buy a gas cylinder at a shop in Kongowea. You pay in full, the seller thanks you warmly, and a boda rider straps the cylinder to the carrier with a rubber strap that has clearly seen two administrations. Somewhere between the shop and your gate, the strap decides it has done enough for one lifetime. The cylinder meets the tarmac. A crowd forms within seconds, as crowds do in this country, to offer commentary rather than assistance. You walk back to the shop. The seller is sympathetic but firm. The cylinder left his premises in perfect condition. You point out that you had not yet reached home. Both statements are true. Neither answers the only question that matters. At the moment that strap gave way, whose cylinder was it? This is one of the oldest questions in commercial law, and the Sale of Goods Act, Chapter 31, answers it with a principle that surprises almost everybody. Risk does not follow possession. Risk follows ownership. The Latin is r...
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What Kenyan courts actually require before family land becomes your land

  By Valarie ibalai There is a version of this story you have probably heard at every family gathering. A father moves land into an older sibling's name maybe because the younger one is still a minor, maybe just to keep things simple with the understanding that it will eventually pass down. Everyone grows up believing it is settled. Then the sibling holding the title refuses to transfer it or passes away and their spouse wants the rest of the family off the land. The advice that circulates at this point is always some version of the same thing: get a lawyer and get them to argue customary trust. It does not work like that, what most people call “customary trust” in conversation is actually two different legal claims wearing the same name and Kenyan courts do not treat them the same way. Two different trusts, often confused Classic customary trust is about ancestral land. A clan or family held land communally under African customary law before it was ever registered to an ...
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Your Landlord Cannot Legally Lock You Out- Even If You Owe Rent

Thousands of Kenyan tenants come home to find their locks changed, their belongings on the pavement, or their water and power cut off. Almost none of them know this is illegal, regardless of how much rent is owed. The Myth Most Tenants Believe Ask most Kenyans what happens if they fall behind on rent, and they’ll assume the landlord has every right to lock them out, seize their property, or cut their utilities until they pay up or leave. It feels like common sense, it’s the landlord’s property, after all. It is also flatly wrong. Kenyan law draws a hard line between a landlord’s right to be paid and a landlord’s right to enforce that payment personally. The moment a landlord takes matters i nto their own hands, instead of going through the courts, they cross from being owed money to committing an offence. “Self-Help” Eviction Is Illegal, No Matter the Reason! Kenyan law does not permit landlords to act as judge, jury, and enforcer in their own dispute. Changing the locks wh...
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That plot you bought already has two owners

What Kenyan land buyers need to know about title fraud, parallel titles and the rights they never knew they had. By Ibalai Vallary Advocate Trainee · Ibalai Legal You did your homework. You paid for an official search. It came back clean, your name went on the title, and you finally had a plot to build on. Then, six months later, a fencing crew shows up with their own title deed for the exact same parcel issued years before yours, by the same registry. You did not forge anything. You did not skip the search. But the person who sold to you may not have owned what they sold, and the law does not automatically protect you just because you believed you were buying something real. This is not an edge case. It is standard operating procedure in Kenya's land market. A May 2026 report on a Nairobi land fraud syndicate takedown put an estimated KES 4.5 billion in property value in active fraud litigation in Nairobi courts, with more than 300 irregular-transfer complaints filed wi...
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Goods Once Sold Are Not Returnable. Says Who?

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  The Law You Live, Part One            By Tim Munyi Mugo, Advocate  It is a Saturday afternoon on Luthuli Avenue. A young man has just bought a phone. The seller demonstrated it beautifully. Screen bright, speakers loud, camera sharp enough to count the pores on your face. Money changed hands, the phone was wrapped with the speed of a relay baton exchange, and everyone smiled. By Sunday morning the phone will not charge. By Sunday afternoon it will not switch on. On Monday our friend returns to Luthuli, where the seller listens with genuine sorrow, then points at a small sign hanging behind the counter and hidden in receipts, the same sign that hangs in shops from Kongowea to Kamukunji, usually printed in a font that has seen things.  Goods once sold are not returnable. Most buyers walk away at this point, defeated by the authority of receipt, or laminated paper. What almost nobody on that street knows is that a law older than the ta...
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