အမှုကြားနာပြီးနောက်သေဆုံးခြင်းကြောင့်အမှုရပ်စဲမှုမရှိခြင်း။

 ဆရာကြီးဦးမြသင်ကြားပို့ချချက်များ

အမှုကြားနာပြီးနောက်သေဆုံးခြင်းကြောင့်အမှုရပ်စဲမှုမရှိခြင်း။

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တရားမကျင့်ထုံးဥပဒေအမိန့်၂၂၊နည်း၆တွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းပြဌာန်းထားသည်-

၆။    အထက်ပါနည်းဥပဒေများတွင်မည်သို့ပင်ပါရှိစေကာမူ၊တရားစွဲဆိုနိုင်ရန်အကြောင်းကျန်ရှိသည်ဖြစ်စေ၊မကျန်ရှိသည်ဖြစ်စေ၊အမှုကြားနာခြင်းအဆုံးသတ်ပြီးနောက်စီရင်ချက်မချမှတ်မီအတွင်းတဘက်ဘက်သောအမှုသည်သေဆုံးခြင်းကြောင့်အမှုရပ်စဲခြင်းမရှိစေရ၊ယင်းအမှုတွင်ထိုသို့သေဆုံးစေကာမူစီရင်ချက်ချမှတ်နိုင်သည်။ထို့ပြင်ယင်းစီရင်ချက်သည်မသေဆုံးမီချမှတ်ဘိသကဲ့သို့အတည်ဖြစ်၍အကျိုးသက်ရောက်စေရမည်။

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ဥပဒေသဘော

တရားရုံးသည်ကွယ်လွန်သူအကျိုးအတွက်ဖြစ်စေ၊ကွယ်လွန်သူအပေါ်ဖြစ်စေ၊ဒီကရီချမှတ်ခွင့်မရှိဟူသောမူ၏ခြွင်းချက်ကိုနည်း၆တွင်ပြဌာန်းထားသည်။

[ Ram Khelawan Choudhury v. Ramudar Choudhury., AIR 1939 Pat 534. ]

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အမှုကိုကြားနာပြီးနောက်အချိန်မရွေးဒီကရီချမှတ်ခြင်းသည်ကြားနာမှုပြီးပြတ်သည့်နေ့တွင်ချမှတ်ဘိသကဲ့သို့အကျိုးသက်ရောက်သည်ဟုအဓိပ္ပာယ်ကောက်ယူရမည်ဟူသောမူပေါ်တွင်အခြေခံသည်။

[ Ebrahim Aboobaker And Anr. vs L. Achhru Ram , Equivalent citations: AlR 1952 P&H1, AIR 1952 PUNJAB 1 ]

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ပဏာမဒီကရီချမှတ်ပြီးနောက်သေဆုံးခြင်းဖြစ်လျှင်ဤနည်းဥပဒေနှင့်မသက်ဆိုင်။

[ Dawarali Jafarali Saiyad vs Bai Jadi And Ors., Equivalent citations: AIR 1940 BOM 318, AIR 1940 BOMBAY 318 ]

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တရားမကျင့်ထုံးဥပဒေအမိန့်၂၂၊နည်း၆ပါပြဌာန်းချက်များသည်အမှုကြားနာခြင်းပြီးပြတ်သည့်နေ့နှင့်ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်ချသည့်နေ့ကြားကာလတွင်အမှုသည်တဦးသေဆုံးကြောင်းမသိဘဲစီရင်ချက်ချမှတ်သည့်အမှုနှင့်သက်ဆိုင်သည်သာမက၊တရားရုံးကထိုသို့သေဆုံးကြောင်းသိရှိသည့်အခါစီရင်ချက်ချမှတ်ရန်လည်းပြဌာန်းသည်။အမှုသည်သေဆုံးခြင်းသည်စီရင်ချက်ချမှတ်ခြင်းမပြုဟုငြင်းပယ်ရန်ဖြစ်စေ၊စီရင်ချက်ချမှတ်ရုံမှတပါးအစစအရာရာပြီးစီးပြီးဖြစ်သောအမှုအားရုပ်သိမ်းခွင်ပြုရန်ဖြစ်စေလုံလောက်သောအကြောင်းမဟုတ်။

[ A. I. R. 1918 Upper Burma 9, Ma Kin Nyun-Applicant. V. Ma Tin-Opposite Party., Equivalent citation = Ma Kin Nyun v Ma Tin [1917] AllINRprUB 16; (1918) AIR UB 9; 44 IC 620; 3 UBR 46 (15 October 1917) ]

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Nullity Of Judicial Proceedings Involving The Deceased Parties: Reconciling Doctrinal Foundations With Procedural Deviations

Dr. Haider Ali', Varalakshmi Tadepalliz*

အထက်ပါသုတေသနစာတမ်း၌အောက်ပါအတိုင်းပြဆိုသည်-

The foundational understanding that 'proceedings involving a deceased individual is a nullity' is a keystone of procedural and substantive justice. It rests on the legal maxim "Actio personalis moritur cum persona"— meaning a personal action dies with the person. This understanding emphasises that judicial proceedings cannot validly involve a non-existent legal entity. As a primary doctrine of law, the doctrine of nulity posits that acts or decisions undertaken without essential jurisdiction or involving procedural infirmities are void ab initio and devoid of legal effect. Once declared a nullity, such proceedings are deemed never to have existed in the eyes of the law, incapable of conferring rights, imposing obligations, or producing enforceable consequences. As a protective measure, this doctrine aims to preserve the transperancy of judicial proceedings by ensuring the conformity with the legal framework and procedural requisites--thereby upholding fairness, due process, and legal certainty.

This study explicitly excludes abatement cases due to the non-substitution of legal representatives within the prescribed 90-day period. Instead, it examines the legal ramifications of the doctrine of nullity in the context of judicial orders passed against or in favor of a deceased person and the divergent judicial reasoning in these distinct situations.

The maxim Actio personalis moritur cum persona is premised on the foundational rule that legal disputes must be inter vivos-between living persons or legally recognized entities. In Mohun Chunder Koondo Vs.

Azeem Gazee Chowkeedar,' [12 Suth WR 45; Also See AIR 1961AP 239;]Justice Barnes Peacock and Justice Mitter enunciated a pivotal procedural principle: a suit instituted against a deceased person is null and cannot stand. The ruling delineates two principal scenarios in civil proceedings:

1. Proceedings Initiated Against a Deceased Person: If the individual is already deceased at the time of the institution of a suit, the entire proceeding is ipso facto void. Since a dead person lacks legal personality, no valid legal action can be taken against them, rendering any decree or judgment obtained in such a suit a nullity.

2. Proceedings Initiated Against a Living Person Who Dies During the Suit: If the individual dies during the proceeding, the law mandates that the legal representatives substitute the deceased party within the prescribed time frame. The suit would stand abated, failing such substitution, and any decree passed thereafter is unenforceable unless revived under Order XXII.

This judgment forms the foundation for subsequent jurisprudence on this subject in India, where courts have consistently maintained that proceedings against a dead person lack legal efficacy. In Vishvanath Dnyanoba Vs. Lallu Kabla And Ors, [4 IND. CAS.137] the Bombay High Court unequivocally stated that a court lacks jurisdiction to render a decree either 'in favour of' or 'against' a deceased person. The Patna High Court followed this principle in Ram Khelawan Choudhury Vs. Ramudar Choudhury, 3[ AIR 1939 Patna 534 ]

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AIR 1939 Pat 534.

Ram Khelawan Choudhury 

                    v. 

Ramudar Choudhury

Patna High Court

Apr 17, 1939

အမှု၌၊တရားရုံးသည်ကွယ်လွန်သူအကျိုးအတွက်ဖြစ်စေ၊ကွယ်လွန်သူအပေါ်ဖြစ်စေ၊ဒီကရီချမှတ်ခွင့်မရှိဟူသောမူ၏ခြွင်းချက်ကိုနည်း၆တွင်ပြဌာန်းထားကြောင်းအောက်ပါအတိုင်းမြွက်ဆိုသည်-

[2. In support of this decision the learned Judges referred among other things to the provisions of Section 371 of the CPC, of 1882, and O. 22, R. 9 of the CPC, now in force. 

They also referred to the English view that a suit abates on the death of a party and the American view to the contrary. 

I am not sure that those observations were not really mere obiter in the circumstances of the case.

Nor do the learned Judges refer to the question of jurisdiction on the death of a party in circumstances other than those dealt with in O. 22, R. 6. Several other cases have been referred to before us, but it does not seem necessary to deal with them, for they are easily distinguishable on the facts. 

39 Mad 3864 for instance, is distinguishable on the ground that it was a case of the death of one of the defendants and not of the sole defendant, and it is obvious that where one of the defendants dies, the death need not be any reason for the suit to abate against the living defendants as well. 

The question is one of jurisdiction as was pointed out by Chandavarkar J. in 4 IC 137, and therefore it is immaterial that the decree was passed for an amount which was admitted by the respondent. In my opinion, the decree was a nullity and must be treated as such in the execution proceedings.]

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Ebrahim Aboobaker And Anr. 

            vs 

L. Achhru Ram 

on 24 May, 1951

Equivalent citations: AlR1952P&H1, AIR 1952 PUNJAB 1

JUDGMENT

Harnam Singh, J.

အမှု၌၊အမှုကိုကြားနာပြီးနောက်အချိန်မရွေးဒီကရီချမှတ်ခြင်းသည်ကြားနာမှုပြီးပြတ်သည့်နေ့တွင်ချမှတ်ဘိသကဲ့သို့အကျိုးသက်ရောက်သည်ဟုအဓိပ္ပာယ်

ကောက်ယူရမည်ဟူသောမူပေါ်တွင်အခြေခံကြောင်းအောက်ပါအတိုင်းပြဆိုသည်-

[19. On the merits of the case Shri M.L. Manaksha, learned counsel for the petitioner, points out that Aboobakar Abdulrehman died on the 14th of May, 1950, and the Custodian-General pronounced the order on the 15th of May, 1950. 

On these facts it is said that inasmuch as the Custodian-General pronounced the order subsequent to the death of Aboobakar Abdulrehman, the order in question is a nullity.

20. In paragraph No. 5 of his affidavit sworn by him on the 28th of April, 1951, Shri Achhru Ram, Custodian-General, affirms :

"It is submitted that the order was dictated by the respondent on the 13th May, 1950, after the conclusion of the hearing, and, therefore, it was dated the aforesaid date. It is true that the order was pronounced to the counsel for Aboobakar Abdulrehman on Monday, the 15th May, 1950, after the said counsel had informed the respondent of Aboobakar Abdulrehman's death on the previous day."

Now, in civil cases the death of a party after the conclusion of arguments in the case but before the pronouncement of judgment does not affect the judgment in that case. 

On this point rule 6 of Order XXII of the Code of Civil Procedure may be seen. 

Finding as I do, in a later part of this order that in proceedings under Section 7 of the Ordinance the death of an evacuee does not affect the continuation of; proceedings, I have no doubt that the argument raised has no substance. Indeed, Shri M.L. Manaksha conceded that the death of Aboobakar Abdulrehman does not affect the validity of the order pronounced by the Custodian-General on the 15th of May, 1950.]

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Dawarali Jafarali Saiyad

             vs 

Bai Jadi And Ors. 

on 1 March, 1940

Equivalent citations: AIR1940BOM318, AIR 1940 BOMBAY 318

JUDGMENT

Beaumont, C.J.

အမှု၌၊ပဏာမဒီကရီချမှတ်ပြီးနောက်သေဆုံးခြင်းဖြစ်လျှင်ဤနည်းဥပဒေနှင့်မသက်ဆိုင်ကြောင်းအောက်ပါအတိုင်းပြဆိုသည်-

[3. So that we have to deal with the case on the footing that the defendant died immediately after the preliminary decree was passed. 

In July 1929 there was an application for a final decree. 

At that time, admittedly, the heirs of Haji Bibi had not been brought on record. 

But in that application the defendants named were the heirs of Haji Bibi, that is the husband, who was major, and three children who were minors. 

The learned Judge directed those defendants to be served, and passed a final order for sale, noting that the defendants were absent, though served. 

It is of course, clear that even if the suit did not abate on the death of Haji Bibi and the failure to bring her heirs on record, a final decree could not have been passed against a dead person, and it was essential that her heirs should be before the Court when the final decree was passed. 

It may be that there was an irregularity in that no formal application had been made to the Court to bring the heirs on record. 

But the learned Judge, in accepting the record showing the heirs as defendants and in serving them, in my opinion, must be taken to have directed the heirs to be brought on record, though this was after the time limited under O. 22, Rule 4, to which I will refer presently. 

I think, therefore, that the final decree was valid, assuming that the suit had not abated. 

That view is supported by a decision of this Court in Sitaram v. Anant (1927) 14 AIR Bom 156. 

On that view of the matter I think that in execution of the final decree the plaintiff was not entitled to raise the point that the suit had abated.

However, as the question of abatement has been raised, and dealt with by the learned Extra Assistant Judge, I will dispose of it.

4. The Madras High Court in Perumal Pillay v. Perumal Chetty (1928) 15 AIR Mad 914, the Calcutta High Court in Nazir Ahammad v. Tamizaddi Ahammad, the Rangoon High Court in Muthiah Chettyar v. Tha Zan Hla (1933) 20 AIR Rang 318, and the Lahore High Court in Hari Chand v. Dina Nath (1937) 24 AIR Lah 164 have all held that a suit does not abate by the death of a plaintiff or defendant after a preliminary decree and failure to bring the heirs on record within the due time. 

On the other hand, the Allahabad High Court in Anmol Singh v. Hari Shankar has come to a contrary conclusion. 

The Calcutta High Court relied very strongly, and the other High Courts relied to some extent, on a decision of the Privy Council in Lachmi Narain v. Balmakuna (1924) 11 AIR PC 198. 

In that case the High Court had passed a decree for partition by consent, and the suit was then referred to the Subordinate Court to work out the terms of the partition. 

In the Subordinate Court the plaintiff failed to appear upon some application, and the learned Subordinate Judge thereupon dismissed his suit. 

Their Lordships in the Privy Council held that the Subordinate Judge could not dismiss a suit after a decree had already been passed. 

The particular passage, which is relied on, is in these terms (p. 325):

After a decree has once been made in a suit, the suit cannot be dismissed unless the decree is reversed on appeal, The parties have, on the making of the decree acquired rights or incurred liabilities which are fixed, unless or until the decree is varied or set aside.

5. Their Lordships were however dealing with a case under Order 17, Rule 2, and were not considering the language of Order 22, Rr. 3 and 4, which deal with abatement; and although the observations which I have quoted, are no doubt of general application, they cannot be conclusive on the question which we have to determine, because a rule, which provided in express terms that a suit should abate in certain circumstances even after a decree, would, I apprehend, be competent. The question must ultimately turn on the construction of the relevant Rule, which is Rule 4 of Order 22.

Rule 3 deals with the death of a plaintiff, and Rule 4 deals with the death of a defendant. 

The rules are couched in corresponding language, but as this case involves only the death of a defendant, I need not refer to Rule 3. 

Rule 4 provides that where one of two or more defendants dies and the right to sue does not survive against the surviving defendant or defendants alone, or a sole defendant or sole surviving defendant dies and the right to sue survives, the Court, on an application made in that behalf, shall cause the legal representative of the deceased defendant to be made a party and shall proceed with the suit. 

Then Sub-rule (3) provides that where within the time limited by law no application is made under Sub-rule (1), the suit shall abate as against the deceased defendant. 

Admittedly here no application was made within the prescribed time, and the contention of the appellant is that the suit has abated, since the words "the suit shall abate as against the deceased defendant" are mandatory and apply to this case.

6. But I do not take that view. 

The use of the definite pronoun shows that the suit, which is to abate, is the suit referred to in the earlier part of the rule, and that is a suit in which the right to sue either does not survive against a surviving defendant or defendants alone, or does survive, in the case of the death of a sole defendant. 

Now, where a preliminary decree has been passed, it seems to me that it is quite inappropriate to talk about the right to sue surviving. 

The rights of the parties are crystallised by the preliminary decree. 

The mortgage is established, the mortgagor has a right to redeem, and in default the mortgagee is given certain rights. 

It is no longer open to the plaintiff to sue in respect of his original cause of action; all he can do is to enforce his rights under the preliminary decree. 

No doubt an application for a final decree is not technically an application in execution of the preliminary decree, but it is certainly not an application in respect of the original right to sue. 

It is an application to enforce the rights under the preliminary decree, and though the suit may be continued for that purpose, it seems to me inappropriate to refer to the right to sue as either surviving or not surviving. 

Therefore, on the language of Order 22, Rule 4, I feel no doubt that the rule does not apply to a case in which a preliminary decree has been passed. 

The Allahabad High Court considered that the rule did apply. 

But I think, the learned Judges did not notice the point to which I have referred namely, that it cannot be said that any right to sue still exists after a preliminary decree  has been  passed. 

That is the ground on whichch the High Courts of Madras and Rangoon in particular have proceeded, and, in my opinion, that is the right view of the matter. 

The learned Extra Assistant Judge himself took that view and directed the darkhast to proceed. In my opinion, his decision was right, and the appeal must be dismissed with costs.

Sen, J.

7. l agree.]

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A. I. R. 1918 Upper Burma 9

SAUNDERS, J. C.

Ma Kin Nyun-Applicant.

             V.

Ma Tin-Opposite Party.

Civil Revn. No. 56 of 1917, Dacided on 15th October 1917.

Equivalent citation = Ma Kin Nyun v Ma Tin [1917] AllINRprUB 16; (1918) AIR UB 9; 44 IC 620; 3 UBR 46 (15 October 1917)

အမှု၌၊တရားမကျင့်ထုံးဥပဒေအမိန့်၂၂၊နည်း၆ပါပြဌာန်းချက်များသည်အမှုကြားနာခြင်းပြီးပြတ်သည့်နေ့နှင့်ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်ချသည့်နေ့ကြားကာလတွင်အမှုသည်တဦးသေဆုံးကြောင်းမသိဘဲစီရင်ချက်ချမှတ်သည့်အမှုနှင့်သက်ဆိုင်သည်သာမက၊တရားရုံးကထိုသို့သေဆုံးကြောင်းသိရှိသည့်အခါစီရင်ချက်ချမှတ်ရန်လည်းပြဌာန်းသည်။အမှုသည်သေဆုံးခြင်းသည်စီရင်ချက်ချမှတ်ခြင်းမပြုဟုငြင်းပယ်ရန်ဖြစ်စေ၊စီရင်ချက်ချမှတ်ရုံမှတပါးအစစအရာရာပြီးစီးပြီးဖြစ်သောအမှုအားရုပ်သိမ်းခွင်ပြုရန်ဖြစ်စေလုံလောက်သောအကြောင်းမဟုတ်ကြောင်းအောက်ပါအတိုင်းပြဆိုသည်-

[The provisions of 0.22, R. 6, though no donbt they cover the case where a judgment is delivered in ignorance of the fact that a party has died botween the conclusion of the hearing and the delivery of the decision, also undoubtedly provided for the delivery of judgment where the Court is aware of such death, and they seem to me to make it clear that the death of a party is not sufficient cause for refusing to deliver judg nent or allowing the withdrawal of a suit which has been completed in every respect except for such delivery of judgment. 

It was pointed out in Ramacharya v. Anantacharya (1)  (1897) 21 Bom 314. that the practico in English Courts of equity was in such casea to diaregard the fact of the death of a party occurring while the Court was considering, and to deliver  judgment and draw up the decree as though he was still living and the judgment of their Lordships Lord Chancellor of Ireland is quoted with approval in which it is stated that

“nothing is better settled than that where a cause is heard and merely stands over for consideration the Court will pronounce judgment though the plaintiff or defendant died”

and in Surendra Keshub Roy v. Doorgasoondery Dossee(2),(1892)19 C. I 513= 19 I A 108( P C ), quoted in the same case, the Privy Council, notwithstanding the death of one of the parties pending consideration, delivered judgment and remitted the case to the Indian Courts for disposal without requiring the record to be amended. 

It is argued for the respondent that O.22, R.6, merely lays down that judgment may, in such case, i.e., after the death of one of the parties, be pronounced. 

The rule is not mandatory and this Court should not interfere if the Court fails to pronounce judgment, as a discretion is vested in it to deliver or not to deliver judgment. 

But this discretion must be exercised judicially, and I think it is clear that the Judge did not have the provisions of O.22, R.6, in his mind at all, nor did he purport to act under the rule. 

The case of Mahipat Shamla v. Nathu Vithoba(3),(1909) 33 Bom 722= 4 I C 252., may be referred to.]

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