Court dismisses man’s case seeking compensation after wife ran away with another man from hospital
A lawsuit brought by a man seeking compensation from St Mary’s Mission Hospital in Kenya for allowing his wife to leave hospital with another man after giving birth has been overturned by a court.
The appellant sued St. Mary’s Mission Hospital in Kakamega Courthouse in 2020 seeking general damages from the facility on the grounds that the hospital fired his wife and allowed her to leave with another man. After the birth and at the time of discharge, the Appellant’s wife claimed that he was the baby’s father.
Appeal Court Judges Patrick Kiage, Mumbi Ngugi and Francis Tuiyott sitting in the Kisumu Court of Appeal, sympathized with the man, but disagreed that he (the appellant) be compensated by the hospital for not having detained his wife.
They upheld the lower court’s judgment which added that there was no statutory remedy for such grievances.
Kiage said;
“I agree that if a man takes the woman he loves to a hospital delivery room because she is heavy with a child while happily believing himself to be the father, but when the child lands, the woman escapes him and departs in the company of another shadowy rival for whom the law finds no remedy.”
The judges also said that while the emotional distress the appellant had to endure evokes sympathy, the courts cannot address such issues.
Kiage added;
“As an adult ‘the so-called wife’ is a free moral agent and in a free country she is perfectly free to associate and as in this case to leave the hospital with whomever she wishes since the wife, in this case, declared MN as the father of the child and not as the appellant.”
