Privy Council Court July 1937 Judgments

Commissioners for the Port of Calcutta Vs. Corporation of Calcutta

Court: Privy Council

LORD ALNESS: This is an appeal from a judgment and decree of the High Court of Judicature in Calcutta, dated 22nd August 1935, which reversed the judgment and decree of the same Court in its original civil jurisdiction, dated 8th June 1934, and which decreed the respondents' suit to recover from the appellants the sum of Rs. 44,612-9-4 as damages for negligence. The questions at issue are whether the appellants are liable for the damage caused by the flooding of the respondents' pumping station, and whether their claim was barred by time in virtue of a provision in the Calcutta Port Act, 1890. The principal facts in the case are not in dispute, nor is the amount of damages due by the appellants, if liability is established. As their Lordships have formed a clear opinion that the respondents' claim is statute-barred, and, as their Lordships, in that view, deem it unnecessary to form or express an opinion on the question of negligence, it is possible to abridge the examination of the fac...

His Highness Maharaja Man Singh of Sewai Jaipur Vs. Arjun Lal and Othe ...

Court: Privy Council

SIR GEORGE RANKIN: This appeal is brought by the plaintiff, His Highness the Maharaja of Jaipur, against a decree dated 21st December 1933, of the High Court at Allahabad whereby his suit was dismissed with costs. The suit was brought on 2nd December 1930, in the Court of the Munsif at Allahabad against the Municipal Board of Allahabad (defendant 1) and four persons (defendants 2 to 5) who own and occupy a shop situated near to the junction of City Road and the road leading from the Collector's Cutcherry to Colonelganj within the Municipality of Allahabad. The appellant is the owner of revenue-free land measuring 0.35 acres in Mohalla Katra Jai Singh Sewai, and the shop in question, as also the street in front thereof, are within the limits of the appellant's land. His complaint is that defendants 2 to 5 have, with the sanction of the Municipal Board, but without permission from him, erected a portico along the front of their premises and upon the margin or footpath (patri) of the stre...

Richard Micallef and Others Vs. Giuseppe Bugeja Bonnici

Court: Privy Council

Reported in: AIR1937PC301

LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN: This is an appeal from a decree, dated 2nd November 1934, of the Court of Appeal at Malta, which set aside a decree, dated 10th June 1933, of His Majesty's Civil Court (First Hall), Malta. The solution of the matters in dispute depends upon the true construction of article 17 of the will (dated 24th June 1890) of a testator, Marchese Vincenzo Bugeja, who died on 6th September 1890. There are two questions involved. The first is whether the respondent only acquired an interest in an annuity bequeathed by article 17 if and when he attained the age of 21 years, with the result that he was only entitled to participate as from the happening of that event in the current annual amount of the annuity or in the current annual income of the fund appropriated to meet the annuity; or whether (as he contends) he became entitled on attaining the age of 21 years not only to his participation but also to receive the accumulations of one-third of the annual amount of the annu...

M.P.M. Murugappa Chetti and Another Vs. Official Assignee, Madras

Court: Privy Council

SIR GEORGE LOWNDES: These consolidated appeals arise out of a petition presented by Murugappa Chetti and his brother Ramaswami Chetti (since deceased and now represented by his widow Minakshi Achi) in certain insolvency proceedings in the Madras High Court. The petitioners will for convenience be referred to as the appellants. The Official Assignee of Madras represents a firm known as Ar. Ar. Sm., trading in British India and having a branch in Rangoon, who were adjudicated insolvent on 15th July 1925, and against whose assets the claim of the appellants is made. He will be referred to as the respondent and the Ar. Ar. Sm. Firm as the insolvents. In 1900 one Pethaperumal Chettiar, the grandfather of the appellants and manager of the joint Hindu family of which they were minor members, transferred sums totalling Rupees 76,000 to the insolvents in Rangoon. There is no formal record of the terms upon which this transfer was made and the question is in dispute before the Board. The appella...

Richard Phillip Phillips and Others Vs. William Francis Barns

Court: Privy Council

Reported in: AIR1937PC314

LORD ROCHE: This is an appeal from an order of the Court of Appeal for the Federated Malay States dated 8th October 1935 (Burton, J., Terrell, J.: Sir Samuel Thomas, C. J. dissenting) allowing an appeal by the respondent (the plaintiff in the action) from a judgment of the Supreme Court (Howes, J.) dated 11th May 1935, dismissing the plaintiff's action with costs. The nature and course of the proceedings was as follows :-In the year 1925 the plaintiff, a retired merchant and planter, in the State of Perak, when about to leave Perak to reside in Europe, entrusted certain of his monies available for investment to the management of the defendants, who are accountants at Ipoh in Perak and elsewhere and gave them a power of attorney for the purposes of such management. Loss of capital having been sustained by the plaintiff in connexion with the employment of his monies in 1929 and the following years, the plaintiff on 1st May 1934 filed a plaint, which was amended on 16th August 1934, claim...