Siaya man: I was validly married to late Canadian woman
Forensics workers comb through the debris at the crash site of the Ethiopian Airlines operated Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, at Hama Quntushele village in Oromia region, on March 14, 2019, four days after the plane crashed into a field killing 157 passengers and crew
A Siaya man who claims he was married to a Canadian woman who perished when an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed on March 10, 2019 will have his day in court starting on September 20.
Mr Brian Aris Kobiero wants to be recognised as the bona fide husband of the late Christine Dawn Tanner.
The suit pits Mr Kobiero against Mr Hunter Tanner French, a son of Ms Tanner who lives in Ontario, Canada. If the case goes his way, he would receive millions of shillings in compensation for the wrongful death of his wife.
Mr Kobiero is a teacher at Nyang’oma Boys Secondary School in Siaya County.
Both sides have been given 14 days to file their documents.
“We are setting September 20 as the pretrial conference for this matter, therefore as requested by the plaintiff the court grants 14 for the affidavits, and other documents to be filed and served by both parties,” said Siaya High Court Judge Roselyn Aburili.
Proceedings related to compensation for relatives of the people who died in the crash in Ethiopia are underway in the United States.
Mr Kobiero filed a case under a certificate of urgency on March 25 through his lawyer Doreen Musebe, listing Mr French as the respondent. He accuses Mr French of refusing to recognise him as Ms Tanner’s husband. Mr French is also the trustee of the estate left by his mother.
In Mr Kobiero’s affidavit presented in the Siaya High Court, he explains that he met Ms Tanner on LinkedIn in 2016 when he was looking for a mentor to help him with his master’s thesis on special education. At that time Ms Tanner was the head of the Department of Special Education at Hagersville Secondary School in Canada.
“They met on LinkedIn and became friends because of their common interest in education. When she moved to Kenya, they cohabited at Mr Kobiero’s rented premises and later moved to a bigger house in Narok town between 2016-2019,” read the affidavit.
He also claims that Ms Tanner visited Mr Kobiero’s home in Sega in Siaya County in August 2017 and she was introduced as his wife. That was followed by a traditional Luo marriage ceremony that united the two.
“We agreed and I renovated and re-thatched my house ‘simba’ as required by the Luo traditions of a man ready to marry, she was welcomed and the marriage ceremony was conducted as the culture requires,” he says in his affidavit.
After the plane crashed in 2019 and all occupants were burned beyond recognition, Mr Kobiero claims, he buried a “yago” (banana tree) on the land that his father had allocated to him and his wife. This, he says, signified that the late Ms Tanner was buried in her matrimonial home in Ugenya.
“Days before the burial of Yago, I spent three nights outside my house as required of a widower under Luo customs of burial rites to signify mourning of the lost loved one,” he says.
“I have not entered into any relationship or been in any intimate affair with any woman ever since I lost my wife.”
Mr French, in his affidavit, rejected Mr Kobiero’s assertions, saying that when his mother died she was not married to anyone and was not engaged to anyone with the promise of a marriage.
“The late Ms Tanner had two children, Mr Cody Kevin French and Mr Hunter Tanner French. I, Mr Hunter, was entrusted as a trustee of my late mother’s estate, we were so close and at no point did she mention that she was engaged or married to the Applicant,” Mr French says in his affidavit.
“After the extensive DNA examination which was conducted by the Ethiopian Airlines Agents and Contractors namely Blake Emergency Services to identify the remains of every individual in the crash and the exercise was concluded in October 2019, my brother Mr Cody travelled to Addis Ababa to coordinate collection of our mothers remains and brought them back to Ontario. No remains of my late mother [were] buried anywhere, not even Kenya.”
Mr Kobiero will need to prove to Justice Aburili that he was indeed married to Ms Tanner through a traditional ceremony and so has the right to be part of her family and be included in the compensation proceedings going on in the US.
On his side, Mr Kobiero has Luo elders, who will be witnesses in court.
