Ordinarily I would be inclined to dismiss this case at this point as it discloses no cause of action. However, just in case I misdirected myself on this issue, I will proceed to consider the 3 rd and last issue as I am required to do for purposes of assessing damages if at all it is proved, to ease the work of the appellate court in the event that this matter goes on appeal and succeeds. Issue 3: Whether the defendant is liable to pay royalties to the plaintiff. I must point out from the onset that I will consider this issue based on the assumption that the 1st issue was answered in the affirmative. The plaintiff sought for special damages of 3% of the gross gate collections owing to the alleged infringement by the defendant. The evidence that was adduced to prove the claim was based on the media report. PW1 testified that he wrote a demand letter to the defendant requesting for payment of Shs. 41,400,000/= being 3% of the gross gate collections. He then justified it in his evidence as follows:“We arrived at the figure of the tickets sold from the media and internet. Even some staff of MTN especially Mr. Van Veen talked to the press about the same figures. We had to rely on this source of information after MTN (U) failed to cooperate with us to give us the figure”. As one would expect, counsel for the defendant objected to that source of information as being hearsay. He argued that the site where the information was got needed to be named and unless Mr. Van Veen was going to be called as a witness his alleged message to the press could not be relied upon. Counsel for the plaintiff conceded that the information was hearsay. He then sought to rely on Exhibit P5 (iv) which counsel for the defendant also challenged for containing hearsay information. It is a well settled principle of law that special damages must be specifically pleaded and strictly proved. See: Eladam Enterprises Ltd v S.G.S (U) Ltd & others Civil Appeal No. 20 of 2002 [2004] UGCA 1, KCC v Nakaye (1972) EA 446 and Ronald Kasibante v Shell Uganda Ltd HCCS No. 542 of 2006 [2008] ULR 690 As argued by counsel for the defendant, the plaintiff relied on hearsay evidence from the media and the internet to support its claim for special damages. Surely, was that the best that could be done in view of Order 10 of the CPR which provides for interrogatories, discovery and inspection? The plaintiff could have applied under that Order to obtain documents from the defendant that would give the actual gate collections instead of basing its claim on the alleged media reports which this court was not even shown. That hearsay evidence is merely speculative and cannot be relied upon by this court to assess and award special damages. In any event it is not admissible as it offends the evidence rule. Since the plaintiff has not strictly proved its claim for special damages it would fail. 12