Court : Chennai
Decided on : Aug-18-1939
Reported in : AIR1940Mad140; (1940)1MLJ922
Alfred Henry Lionel Leach, C.J.1. The appellants appeal against an order refusing to recognise them as secured creditors of the Lakshmi Forest Company Limited, which is now under liquidation under an order for compulsory winding up. On the 3rd September, 1932 by a registered deed the appellants conveyed to the Company certain lands in the village of Shedimane, South Kanara District and assigned the benefit of a mortgage decree, which they had obtained in the Court of the Subordinate Judge of South Kanara. The consideration was Rs. 80,000 payable in instalments. The deed purported to charge both the immovable property and the mortgage-decree for the due payment of the balance of the consideration. It was also provided that the vendors should remit a sum of Rs. 10,000 if the Company should pay the balance falling due before the 1st April, 1933 With interest from the 30th June, 1932. The right to rank as secured creditors was challenged by the liquidator, and the appellants took out a Jud...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Chennai
Decided on : Feb-10-1939
Reported in : (1939)1MLJ831
Alfred Henry Lionel Leach, C.J. 1. This appeal raises the question of right of illegitimate sons of a member of a joint family of the Sudra caste to maintenance out of the family estate when it is impartible. The suit was filed by the respondents in the Court of the Subordinate Judge of Nellore to establish their status as illegitimate sons of Venugopal, the paternal uncle of the appellant, the Maharajah of Venkatagiri, and the right which they claimed to maintenance out of the Venkatagiri zemindari, the succession to which is governed by the law of primogeniture. They averred that they were entitled under a deed of family settlement, dated the 8th April, 1889, to an allowance of Rs. 1,000 per mensem from the death of their father, which occurred on the 20th June, 1920, but their claim did not rest on the deed alone. They said that irrespective of the deed they were entitled to an allowance for maintenance by custom and also under Hindu Law. The appellant refused to recognise the respo...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Chennai
Decided on : Oct-06-1939
Reported in : AIR1940Mad118; (1940)1MLJ32
Alfred Henry Lionel Leach, C.J.1. This petition raises important questions with regard to the stamping of plaints in suits for the partition of estates of joint Hindu families. The petitioner is the minor son of a Hindu father. Through his mother as next friend he has filed a suit in the Court of the Subordinate Judge of Kumbakonam for partition of the family properties and for possession of his one-fifth share therein. He has joined as defendants his father, his three brothers, and twenty-two other persons. The stranger defendants are made parties either as alienees of family properties or as creditors of the family. In his plaint the plaintiff avers that the family is one engaged merely in agriculture and that before the matters complained of, it had large cash resources. He alleges that his father has engaged in reckless speculation in land, in trade, and in litigation with the result that the cash resources have disappeared, the family properties have been sold or mortgaged and num...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Mumbai
Decided on : Oct-08-1939
Reported in : AIR1940Bom131; (1940)42BOMLR231
Blackwell, J.1. [After setting out facts, the judgment proceeded :] Section 476 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code is as follows :-When any Civil, Revenue or Criminal Court is, whether on application made to it in this behalf or otherwise, of opinion that it is expedient in the interests of justice that an inquiry should be made into any offence referred to in Section 195, ' Sub-section (1), Clause (b) or Clause (c), which appears to have been committed in or in relation to a proceeding in that Court, such Court may, after suchpreliminary inquiry, if any, as it thinks necessary, record a finding to that effect and make a complaint thereof in writing signed by the presiding officer of the Court, and shall forward the same to a Magistrate of the first class having jurisdiction, and may take sufficient security for the appearance of the accused before such Magistrate or if the alleged offence is non-bailable may, if it thinks necessary so to do, send the accused in custody to such Magistr...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Mumbai
Decided on : Oct-06-1939
Reported in : AIR1940Bom216; (1940)42BOMLR428
N.J. Wadia, J.1. This is a Letters Patent appeal against an order mad by Mr. Justice Norman sitting singly in an appeal from an order made by the District Judge of Belgaum. The appellant before us and another had filed a suit in the Court of the Joint Subordinate Judge of Gokak for accounts and redemption of a mortgage under the Dekkhan Agriculturists' Relief Act. The suit was dismissed by the trial Judge. It related to two lands, survey No. 32 and survey No. 29: It was alleged that plaintiff No. 1 Ravji and his brother Bapuji, since deceased, had mortgaged the whole of survey No. 32 and survey No. 29, pot No. 3, to one Datto Ramchandra Kalkundri. Defendants Nos. 1 to 3 were heirs of the mortgagee. They had transferred their mortgage rights in 1925 to defendant No. 4. In darkhast No. 54 of 1922 brought in execution of a decree obtained by one Vinayak Joshi against Ravji survey Nos. 29/3 and 32/3 were sold as belonging to Ravji, and were purchased by defendant No. 5. Defendants Nos. 6 a...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Mumbai
Decided on : Mar-10-1939
Reported in : AIR1939Bom522; (1939)41BOMLR1084
Kania, J.1. The plaintiff has filed this suit to recover from the defendants Rs. 3,699-14-6 together with interest on Rs. 2,251-5-3 at six per cent. The plaintiff had money dealings with the defendants at Junagadh, and it is alleged that the plaintiff lent Rs. 2,500 to the defendants who carried on business in the firm name of M.D. Karwa and Co. at Junagadh. The plaintiff filed suit No. 460 of Samvat Year 1981 in the Diwani Adalat at Junagadh, and obtained a decree for Rs. 2,009-13-3 on March 18, 1928. Defendant No. 1 being dissatisfied with the decision filed appeal No. 100 of S.Y. 1984-85 in the Sadar Adalat Court of the Junagadh State ; but the appeal was dismissed on February 9, 1929. Defendant No. 1 being still dissatisfied with the decision filed a second appeal in the Huzur Adalat at Junagadh ; but the same was also dismissed on October 16, 1932. The plaintiff has filed the suit on the foreign judgment seeking to enforce the decree of the Huzur Adalat of Junagadh, dated October ...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Mumbai
Decided on : Mar-17-1939
Reported in : (1939)41BOMLR1047
Lancelot Sanderson, J.1. This is an appeal by the plaintiffs in the suit against a judgment and decree of the High Court of Allahabad dated November 28, 1933, whereby the appeal of one of the present respondents, viz. Lachman Singh, was allowed and the suit as against the said Lachman Singh and :his share of the mortgage property was dismissed. The plaintiffs are Kunwar Surendra Bahadur Singh and his two manor sons and the suit was brought for foreclosure of a mortgage dated June 23, 1909, purporting to be executed by Himmat Singh (now deceased), Mulu Singh and Musammat Jamna Kunwar, mother and certified guardian of the said Lachman Singh, who was then a minor, in favour of Surendra Bahadur Singh in respect of certain zemindari property to secure a loan of Rs. 18,000 and 4 1/2 per cent. interest in order to pay off prior mortgages at a higher rate of interest. The defendant-respondents Nos. 1-9 are heirs of Himmat Singh, No. 10 is Lachman Singh, Nos. 11, 12 and 13 are Mulu Singh and hi...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Mumbai
Decided on : Sep-21-1939
Reported in : AIR1940Bom97
Beaumont, C.J.1. This suit is brought by the plaintiff on behalf of herself and all other holders of the second preference shares in the Tata Iron and Steel Co. Ltd., against the company claiming in effect to establish that the company were not entitled to deduct from dividends on the second preference shares income-tax for the years 1922-23 to 1934-35 inclusive on the ground that in those years the company's income was assessed at nil and the company was exempted from payment of income-tax. The suit was heard by a Bench of three Judges because it was represented to me that large sums were at stake and that an appeal would almost certainly be preferred to the Privy Council, and that the questions at issue depended on documentary evidence, and raised only matters of law. The plaint in para. 21 raises a case of fraudulent misrepresentation but that claim was abandoned at the outset of the case, and thereupon the defendant company abandoned their contention that the suit is not maintainab...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Mumbai
Decided on : Jan-27-1939
Reported in : (1939)41BOMLR708
George Rankin, J.1. This is a decree-holder's appeal. It is brought by the Oudh Commercial Bank, Ltd., Fyzabad, against an order of the Chief Court of Oudh dated August 14, 1934, dismissing an application for the execution of a final decree for sale passed on January 22, 1916, by the Subordinate Judge, Mohanlalganj, Lucknow. The respondents are the representatives of Babu Narindra Bahadur Singh (herein called the 'judgment-debtor') who died in 1936 while the present appeal was pending.2. He was the grantor of a mortgage to the appellants dated September 2, 1894, for Rs. 2,35,000 at eight per cent. per annum over a large number of ancestral properties including both proprietary (kham) and under-proprietary (pukhtadari) villages. To enforce this mortgage a suit was brought against him by the appellants in 1911 and a preliminary decree for sale obtained on October 31, 1912, from the Subordinate Judge. On appeal to the Judicial Commissioner's Court this preliminary decree was on June 15, 1...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Privy Council
Decided on : Mar-17-1939
Sir George Rankin: This appeal is brought from two decrees of 22nd December 1930, made in the exercise of the original jurisdiction conferred upon the Chief Court of Oudh by Sec. 7, Oudh Courts Act, 1925, an Act of the Local Legislature of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. By these decrees Nanavutty J. as trial Judge, after a protracted hearing, dismissed two suits (numbered respectively 11 and 12 of 1928), which had been instituted on 2nd November 1928. The two suits were tried together and one judgment was given covering the issues in both. They came on for hearing on 15th July 1929. Evidence both oral and documentary was adduced in great quantity: the hearing continued until 2nd August 1929, when the case was postponed until 13th February 1930: thereafter the case was heard on a number of dates in February, March and April of that year. Sixteen issues in one case and fourteen in the other had been framed and in a lengthy judgment the learned Judge considered and decided a numbe...
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