High Court orders Mater Hospital to release detained body over Sh3.3 million bill
The applicants contended that the hospital's conduct was exploitative and had compounded their grief by denying them the opportunity to accord their mother a dignified burial.
The High Court has directed Mater Misericordiae Hospital to release the remains of a woman it has held for close to two months due to an unpaid bill of Sh3.3 million.
In a ruling issued on September 23, 2025, Justice Nixon Sifuna declared that the hospital's action of detaining the body of Caroline Nthangu Tito was illegal, unconstitutional, and against public policy.
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The judge further underscored that Kenyan law does not recognise any right by hospitals to claim a lien over patients or retain bodies after death as a means of recovering debts.
The case had been brought before the court by Caroline's sons, Moses Mutua and his brother, both students who said they had been left destitute after their father's earlier death.
The court heard that their mother was admitted to Mater Hospital on May 22, 2025 and remained under treatment until her death on August 2.
Upon her passing, the hospital presented the family with a bill totalling Sh3,315,784 and refused to release her body until the amount was cleared. Mortuary fees of Sh2,000 per day were also being added, deepening the family's financial strain.
The applicants contended that the hospital's conduct was exploitative and had compounded their grief by denying them the opportunity to accord their mother a dignified burial. They asked the court to declare the detention unlawful and to compel the hospital to hand over the body.
In a worded decision, Justice Sifuna criticised the entrenched practice by hospitals of holding corpses as collateral for bills. He described it as a form of coercion and psychological torture for families already in mourning.
According to him, "medical and mortuary bills are enforceable through civil recovery procedures, not by what he termed the 'unlawful detention of dead bodies'.
Quoting established legal principles, the judge reiterated that there is "no property in a corpse," hence no institution can exercise a lien over it. He held that such practices offend both justice and morality.
Consequently, the court issued a mandatory injunction directing Mater Hospital to release the body to Caroline's sons upon settlement of the accrued mortuary charges only.
The hospital was advised to pursue the larger outstanding debt through lawful civil proceedings. Each side was ordered to bear its own costs.
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