A Title Deed Is Not Proof You Own the Land. The Supreme Court Just Confirmed It in Sehmi v Tarabana.

Key Data

In Harcharan Sehmi & another v Tarabana Company Limited & 5 others, Petition E033 of 2023, [2025] KESC 21 (KLR), the Supreme Court held that under the Land Registration Act a certificate of title is only prima facie evidence of ownership, not conclusive (SOJAR FY 2024/25, Ch.3.1.1, Supreme Court jurisprudence, p.95+). The Court held the bona fide purchaser doctrine does not shield purchasers of illegally or irregularly allocated public land, and that a title from an illegal or procedurally flawed process is void (Ch.3.1.1). In Giraffe View Estate Limited v Jemeau & 5 others, [2025] KEELC 1341 (KLR), the Environment and Land Court held that land surrendered to the State for a public utility cannot be reclaimed or reallocated to a private party, and a title so issued was unlawful (Ch.3.1.5, ELC jurisprudence, p.145+). Reading note: the holdings are reported in the SOJAR; the due-diligence reading and the actions below are CounselConnect's interpretation, not legal or financial advice.

What Is Happening

The comfortable assumption in a conveyancing file is that a clean title plus value plus no notice equals a safe buyer. Sehmi v Tarabana narrows that. Under the repealed Registration of Titles Act, title was treated as conclusive. Under the Land Registration Act, the Supreme Court has now confirmed, a certificate of title is only prima facie evidence and can be unwound for fraud, misrepresentation or illegality.

The protection a buyer leans on, the bona fide purchaser for value without notice, was confined. It guards against prior equitable interests. It does not cure an illegal root of title, and it does not save a purchaser of public land that was irregularly allocated. Giraffe View Estate drives the same point on public-utility land: once surrendered to the State, it cannot quietly find its way back into private hands.

Why It Is Happening

Legal and regulatory: the shift from the Registration of Titles Act to the Land Registration Act changed the evidentiary weight of a title, and the Supreme Court has now read that change at its full strength. The Constitution reinforces it. Article 40(6) provides that property rights do not extend to property found to have been unlawfully acquired, a point the courts applied in Giraffe View Estate and in Assets Recovery Agency v Quorandum Limited [2025] KEHC 4870 (KLR) (SOJAR Ch.3.1.3).

Practice Impact and Revenue

Conveyancing due diligence that stops at a current title search and a clean register is now thin. The root of title matters, and where public land or an allocation history is anywhere in the chain, the risk that a court later voids the title sits with your buyer. Case strategy on the dispute side changes too: challenging a registered proprietor is viable where you can show an illegal or irregular root, rather than being defeated at the door by the certificate itself.

Revenue Impact

This expands conveyancing due diligence into a deeper, separately scoped service rather than a box-ticking search. A root-of-title and allocation-history review, priced as a distinct due-diligence product for higher-value or public-land-adjacent transactions, reflects the real work the ruling now demands. Buyers who understand that a title can be voided will pay for the deeper search; the ones who do not are the ones who come back with a dispute you could have prevented.

Strategic Insight — What Most Advocates Will Miss

Most conveyancers will file Sehmi as interesting case law and keep running the same search. The miss is that the ruling moves liability exposure onto the advocate who certified a title as safe on a thin search. The protective move is to scope and document a root-of-title review, especially on any parcel with a public-land or allocation history, so the file shows you tested the chain rather than trusting the certificate. This is CounselConnect's reading, offered as opinion and not as legal or financial advice.