Facts:

On the 24th of December 2011, the Respondent approached the Appellant, a foreign Airline that operates cargo services, to convey 182kgs of Hair attachments from Lagos to one Emile Musanbuku, a customer in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Upon the agreement of the parties to the terms of the contract, the Respondent paid the entire freight and other duties charged by the Appellant for the services to be rendered. The Appellant, however, failed to deliver the consignment of goods to the Respondent’s customer in Glasgow or return the same to Lagos. The Appellant did not also return to the Respondent the value of the goods and all incidental expenses incurred despite demands to that effect, through correspondences, which were not responded to by the Appellant. Numerous meetings, telephone calls, entreaties, etcetera, were put forth to the Appellant, but all did not yield any positive result. Thus, the Respondent resorted to going to Court, and filed its Originating Process before the Federal High Court, Lagos Division (trial Court).

Upon the Appellant failing to enter an appearance and to file their statement of defence after being served with the Respondent’s originating process, the Respondent sought an order for judgment against the Appellant. On this note, the Appellant, through its counsel, filed a motion on notice before the lower court for an extension of time within which he may file his Memorandum of Conditional Appearance as well as for a deeming order. A day after filing the first application, the Appellant filed another application seeking an order to set aside the motion for judgment filed by the Respondent, for being incompetent on the ground that it was signed by an undisclosed person.

On the hearing date, the Appellant drew the court’s attention to his pending application for an extension of time to enter appearance and indicated his readiness to move the application. Counsel to the Respondent opposed the application on the ground that it did not comply with the rules as same was not accompanied with the Statement of Defence, List of witnesses, Statement of witnesses on oath and List of documents to be relied upon, and the court refused the application for non-compliance with the Rules.

Learned counsel for the parties further advanced arguments on which application should be heard first between the Respondent’s application for judgment and the Appellant’s application to set aside the purported service of the originating processes. On this note, the Appellant’s counsel suggested that the two applications be taken together, but the Respondent’s counsel objected to that suggestion. Upon taking the arguments, the trial court ruled that the Appellant was not properly before the court and so counsel on its behalf cannot be heard and its application cannot be taken. The trial court then heard the Respondent’s application for judgment and proceeded to enter judgment for the Respondent as per his head of claim.

This aggrieved the Appellant, and by a Notice of Appeal, appealed the decision of the trial Court before the Court of Appeal.