ကာလစည်းကမ်းသတ်ဥပဒေ[ Part Four ]

ဆရာကြီးဦးမြသင်ကြားပို့ချချက်များ

ကာလစည်းကမ်းသတ်ဥပဒေ[ Part Four  ]

ကာလစည်းကမ်းသတ်အက်ဥပဒေပုဒ်မ၃တွင်၊အောက်ပါအတိုင်းပြဌာန်းထားသည်-

[ ပုဒ်မ၄မှပုဒ်မ၂၅အထိပါရှိသောပုဒ်မများပါပြဌာန်းချက်များနှင့်မဆန့်ကျင်စေဘဲ၊ပထမဇယားတွင်ပြဌာန်းထားသောစည်းကမ်းသတ်ကာလကုန်ဆုံးမှစွဲဆိုသည့်တရားမကြီးမှု၊တင်သွင်းသည့်အယူခံမှုနှင့်လျှောက်ထားမှုတို့ကိုကာလစည်းကမ်းသတ်ချက်ကိုအကြောင်းပြု၍ချေပခြင်းပင်မပြုသော်လည်းပလပ်ရမည်။ ]

ဤပြဌာန်းချက်အရတရားရုံးများတွင်မည်မျှတာဝန်ကြီးကြောင်းပေါ်ပေါက်သည်။

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1940  RANGOON LAW REPORTS.  273

APPELLATE CIVIL.

Before Sir Ernest Goodman Roberts, Kt., Chief Justice, and Mr. Justice Dunkley.

THE OFFICIAL TRUSTEE V. MRS. RAEBURN AND OTHERS.*

အမှုတွင်၊ပုဒ်မ၃နှင့်စပ်လျဉ်း၍၊ကာလစည်းကမ်းသတ်ပြဿနာသည်ဝန်ခံထားသောသို့မဟုတ်သက်သေထင်ရှားပြဆိုပြီးဖြစ်သောအကြောင်းခြင်းရာများအရအဆုံးအဖြတ်ပေးနိုင်သည့်ဥပဒေအကြောင်းသက်သက်ပြဿနာဖြစ်လျင်၊တရားရုံးသည်ယင်းပြဿနာကိုမိမိသဘောအလျောက်ဖော်ထုတ်အဆုံးအဖြတ်ပေးရန်တာဝန်ရှိပေသည်။

ကာလစည်းကမ်းသတ်ပြဿနာသည်အဆိုလွှာအရပေါ်ပေါက်ခြင်းမရှိသည့်အကြောင်းခြင်းရာငြင်းချက်များနှင့်သက်ဆိုင်ပါမူ၊တရားမကျင့်ထုံးဥပဒေအမိန့်၈၊နည်း၂အရတရားပြိုင်သည်ယင်းပြဿနာကိုချေလွှာ၌ထုချေရန်တာဝန်ရှိပေသည်။

ထိုသို့ထုချေရန်ပျက်ကွက်လျင်ယင်းပြဿနာကိုနောက်ပိုင်း၌တင်ပြခွင့်ပြုသင့်၊မသင့်တရားရုံးကဆင်ခြင်တုံတရားအရခွင့်ပြုရန်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း၊အောက်ပါအတိုင်းထုံးဖွဲ့သည်-

[ Where the question of limitation is purely one of law capable of determination on the facts admitted or proved before the Court, the Court is bound under s. 3 of the Limitation Act to raise the question suo motu and decide it.

Maqbul Ahmad v Pratap Singh, I.L.R. 57 All. 242, referred to.

Where the question of limitation raises issues of fact not arising from the plaint, the defendant is bound under 0. 8, r. 2 of the Civil Procedure Code to raise such question in his written statement; if he fails to do so, thereafter it is in the discretion of the Court to allow the question to be raised or not. ]

တရားသူကြီးချုပ် ROBERTS, C.J. က၊ကာလစည်းကမ်းသတ်ဥပဒေပြဿနာနှင့်စပ်လျဉ်း၍အယူခံတွင်စောဒကတက်ခွင့်ရှိ၊မရှိ၊စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ-၂၈၉နှင့်၂၉၀တွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းမြွက်ဆိုသည်-

[ ROBERTS,  C.J. The question of limitation does not appear to have been raised in the pleadings. Can it be argued at this stage ? ]

[ Under s. 3 of the Limitation Act the Court is bound to take notice of the plea if on the pleadings the point can be decided. 

Order VIII, r. 2 does not stand in the way. 

Though the defence ought to have been raised in the written statement, yet it is not legally necessary where the question of limitation can be decided on the face of the plaint. 

See M.S. Chettiar Firm v. S. E. Bholat (1). I.L.R. 13 Ran. 43 ]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ-၂၉၂တွင်၊အောက်ပါအတိုင်းသုံးသပ်သည်-

[ But the question of limitation cannot be gone into at this stage. 

The plaints clearly showed that they were within s. 10 of the Limitation Act, and the defendant should have expressly pleaded the defence under O. VIII, r. 2. 

No question of limitation can therefore arise on the face of the plaints. 

See Venkata Narasinha Naidu v. Bhashyakarlu Naidu (2). I.L.R. 25 Mad. 367, 378. ]

ROBERTS, C.J. and DUNKLEY, J.တို့က၊စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ-၃၀၁မှ၃၀၄အထိတွင်၊ကာလစည်းကမ်းသတ်ဥပဒေပြဿနာနှင့်စပ်လျဉ်း၍၊အောက်ပါအတိုင်းအကျယ်တဝင့်သုံးသပ်သည်-

[ Turning now to the question of limitation, admittedly this question is not raised in the pleadings, and was not mentioned on behalf of the defendant-appellant until the twenty-fifth day of the hearing of the suits, when all the evidence had been recorded and the arguments of counsel had begun. 

For the plaintiffs-respondents it is urged that the point ought not to have been allowed to be raised at that stage, and reliance is placed on the provisions of Order VIII, Rule 2, of the Civil Procedure Code, which, so far as it is material, reads as follows :

"The defendant must raise by his pleading all matters which show the suit not to be maintainable………..as, for instance,………..limitation,………”

The defendant-appellant, on the other hand, relies on the provisions of section 3 of the Limitation Act, which runs as follows :

"Subject to the provisions contained in sections 4 10 25 (inclusive), every suit instituted………….after the period of limitation prescribed therefor by the first schedule shall be dismissed, although limitation has not been set up as a defence."

These at first sight seemingly contradictory provisions are easily reconcilable. 

Section 3 makes the question of limitation a material question although not raised by the parties; but a Court is not bound to raise and decide a question of fact of its own motion. 

Hence, where the question of limitation is purely one of law capable of determination on the facts admitted or proved before the Court, the Court is bound under the provisions of section 3 to raise the question suo motu and decide it. 

[Maqbul Ahmad and others v Pratap Narain Singh and others (1).(1935) 1.L.R. 57 All. 242, 250. ] 

But where the question of limitation raises issues of fact not arising from the plaint, the defendant is bound under Order VIII, Rule 2, to raise such question in his written statement; if he fails to do so, thereafter it is within the discretion of the Court to allow the question to be raised or not.

[Venkata Narasinha Naidu and another v. Bhash-vakarlu Naidu and another (2). (1902) I,L.R. 25 Mad. 367, 378.] 

The law was briefly stated in this sense in M.S. Chettiar Firm v. S. E. Bholat(3) (1934) I,L.R. 13 Ran, 43, 46,

Now, in these suits the question of limitation was raised by the facts alleged in the plaints themselves, and the Court was therefore bound, under the provisions of section 3 of the Limitation Act, to decide the question on the facts stated in the plaints, at whatever stage of the hearing it was raised, or even if it was not raised at all by the parties themselves.

Section 3 lays down that every suit instituted after the period of limitation prescribed therefor by the first schedule shall be dismissed, with a saving clause in regard to the provisions of the succeeding sections of the Act. 

Hence the normal periods of limitation are those prescribed by the first schedule, and sections 4 to 27 provide exceptions to or qualifications of the ordinary provisions of the law. 

Consequently il is necessary, first, to decide what article of the first schedule of the Limitation Act is applicable to these suits and to apply it, and then to see whether sections 4 to 25 of the Act contain any exception or qualification which modifies the ordinary law in its application to these cases.

It is common ground that the article applicable is Article 120, and this prescribes a period of limitation of six years and lays down that time begins to run when the right to sue accrues. 

Now the plaints set out that the cause of action arose in August, 1928, and on certain subsequent dates, and the plaints were filed on the 3rd September, 1937. 

Hence under Article 120 all righis of action based upon alleged breaches of trust occurring prior to the 3rd September, 1931, were prima facie barred by limitation. 

Two such breaches of trust are alleged in the plaint, namely, (1) failure to invest the. trust funds between August, 1928, and February, 1929, and (2) improper investments on mortgage in December,1928. 

The suits, so far as they are based on these alleged breaches of trust, were therefore prima facie barred by limitation; and, as we have said, the facts necessary for this decision are set out in the plaints themselves, and the Court was therefore bound by the provisions of section 3 to decide the question of limitation, although it was not raised in the written staternents of the defendant-appellant.

Section 10 of the Limitation Act, however, provides an exception to the ordinary law in the case of breach of trust by an express trustee. 

This section, so far as it is material, reads as follows :

"Notwithstanding anything hereinbefore contained, no suit against a person in whom property has become vested in trust for any specific purpose, . ..for the purpose of following in his... . . hands such property, or the proceeds there-of, or for an account of such property or proceeds, shall be barred by any length of time."

Consequently the provisions of section 10 are applicable to an express trust, such as the trusts which form the subject-matter of these suits; and in our opinion the provisions of the section are plain and scarcely open to misconstruction. 

The section says in terms that when a suit is brought by a beneficiary against a trustee of an express trust for an account of property which has become vested in the trustee, or the proceeds of such property, the suit shall never become barred by lapse of time. 

But the section has no application to a claim for an account of moneys which ought, but for the default of the trustee, to have come into his hands, but in actual fact never became vested in him. 

It does not apply to a claim for an account on the footing of wilful default. 

Such a claim is liable to be barred by limitation, and Article 120 of the First Schedule is the article applicable. 

[ New Fleming Spinning & Weaving Co. Ltd. v. Ressowji Naik and others (1);(1885) I.L.R. 9. Bom. 373, 399.

Sayad Hussein Miyan Dada Miyan and another v. The Collector of Kaira (2) ;(1895) I.L.R. 21 Bom, 257, 264, 267.

Katta Thola-singam Chetty v. Vedachella Aiyah and four (3);(1917) I.L,R. 41 Mad. 319, 323.

Shirinbai Dinshaw Chokshi v. Sir Navroji Pestonji Vakil (4). 37 Bom. L.R. 946, 953, 954, 955. ] 

Hence the claim for an account of the corpus of the trust funds which became vested in the defendant-appellant falls within the ambit of section 10, and is not barred by limitation; but the claim for an account of the interest which the appellant ought to have earned for the trust funds, but failed to earn, between August, 1928, and February, 1929, is time-barred under Article 120. ]

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