Full Judgment
Knox and Blair, JJ.
1. This is an application praying this Court to substitute the names of Sophia Jessie Mann and John Edwin Howard for the name of one H.C. Mann, deceased, as respondents to an appeal pending in this Court. The sections of the Code mentioned in the application are Sections 368 and 582 of Act No. XIV of 1882.
2. It appears that proceedings were taken under Section 214 of the Indian Companies Act against H.C. Mann and others. That application was dismissed upon some preliminary point, we are informed, and an order was added directing the appellants before us to pay costs. An appeal was filed from this order, and, before that appeal could come on for hearing, H.C. Mann, one of the respondents, died. Upon an application for substitution of names, we issued a notice to the respondents to show cause. The learned Counsel who appears for the respondents in showing cause drew our attention to explanation II of Section 214 of the Indian Companies Act. That explanation lays down in the most clear and distinct terms that proceedings cannot be taken under Section 214 against the representatives of a deceased officer. The learned Counsel for the appellants argued that, as proceedings had already been taken, this explanation did not apply to the present case, and that it was open to the appellants to continue them against the representatives of the deceased. We were referred to no precedent in support of this view, and such a view appears to us to be in direct contravention of the letter and spirit of Section 214. But it was argued that if this was the interpretation to be placed upon the explanation in question, at any rate there was a right of appeal, so far as that part of the order is concerned, which directs that costs be paid by the appellants to the deceased H.C. Mann and that, if this order as to costs was illegal, their recovery could be claimed and enforced against the representatives of the said H.C. Mann. We do not see how this part of the order can be divorced from the rest of the order. The order, as a whole, was passed in proceedings taken under Section 214. It cannot be enforced either in whole or in part against the representatives of the deceased except by a proceeding which can only be taken under or in pursuance of the proceedings already taken under Section 214. Any attempt to take such proceedings would be an attempt to take them against persons over whom the law has thrown a shield. The effect and tenor of Section 214 has been fully discussed in this Court in other proceedings, and in the judgment passed in those proceedings we fully concur. They explain, what in fact Section 214 puts in more concise language, the nature and object of this section; and we are satisfied that it is a section which provides special remedies differing from all other legal proceedings. We dismiss the application with costs.