လုံလောက်သောအကြောင်း[ sufficient cause ][ Part Two ]

 ဆရာကြီးဦးမြသင်ကြားပို့ချချက်များ

လုံလောက်သောအကြောင်း[ sufficient cause ][ Part Two ]

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၁၈၉၆ ခုနှစ်၊မေလ ၁၈ ရက်နေ့၌စီရင်ဆုံးဖြတ်သော-

VOL. XXIII. CALCUTTA SERIES. 991 ( 998 )

ORIGINAL CIVIL.

Before Mr. Justice Ameer Ali.

RAMPERIAB MULL AND ANOTHER 

                       V. 

JAKEERAM AGURWALLAH AND OTHERS, AND THREE OTHER SUITS BY SAME PLAINTIFFS AGAINST OTHER DEFENDANTS.

Original Civil Suits Nos, 217, 218, 220, and 221 of 1894.

1896 May. 18.

အမှုတွင်အကျိုးသင့်အကြောင်းသင့်မဟုတ်[ အကြောင်းမဲ့ ]ဟုမဆိုနိုင်သောသို့မဟုတ်တရားလိုတွင်တာဝန်မရှိသောမှားယွင်းမှုသည်လုံလောက်သောအကြောင်းဖြစ်သည်ဟုကာလကတ္တားတရားလွှတ်တော်တရားဝန်ကြီး Mr. Justice Ameer Ali ကအောက်ပါအတိုင်းဆုံးဖြတ်သည်-

[ When the plaintiff’s suit came on for hearing his Counsel applied for a postponement.

This application was refused, and the plaintiff’s Counsel, not being further instructed, left the Court.

The suit was then dismissed for want of prosecution.

Subsequently the plaintiff made an application under section 103 of the Civil Procedure Code ( Act XIV of 1882 ) for an order to set the dismissal aside.

Held, refusing the application, that the above circumstances amounted to an appearance on the part of the plaintiff. ]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ ၉၉၅ ၌ Mr. Justice Ameer Ali ကအောက်ပါအတိုင်းမြွက်ဆိုသည်-

[ It is clear from these cases that when the defendant and, by parity of reasoning I may take it the plaintiff, is prevented from proceeding with the case by unavoidable absence, or is prevented from instructing his pleader or Counsel from unavoidable causes or bona fide mistake, it has been held to amount to a non-appearance under section 102 of the Code. 

In the present case the plaintiff was present. He instructed Counsel to apply for an adjournment, and when that was refused he took no further steps. 

I mention this to show that it is by no means clear that the plaintiff has brought himself within the provisions of section 102 of the Code, but having regard to the wide terms in which sections 102 and 103 are couched I am not prepared to hold that the applications do not come within section 103.

Assuming, therefore, that the applications do come within section 103, the next point to consider is whether sufficient cause has been made out for the alleged non-appearance. ]

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Mr. Justice Ameer Ali သည် Mr. Justice Woodroffe နှင့်တွဲဖက်၍နာမည်ကြီးသက်သေခံအက်ဥပဒေကျမ်းကိုပြုစုခဲ့သည်။

ထိုပုဂ္ဂိုလ်နှစ်ဦးမှာအိန္ဒိယနိုင်ငံတရားလွှတ်တော်တရားဝန်ကြီးများဖြစ်ခဲ့ကြသည်။

VOL XXIII. CALCUTTA SERIES. 991 ( 998 ) စီရင်ထုံးအရဆိုလျှင် Mr. Justice Ameer Ali သည် ၁၈၉၆ ခုနှစ်တွင်၊ကာလကတ္တားတရားလွှတ်တော်တရားဝန်ကြီးအဖြစ်တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်ခဲ့သည်။

Mr. Justice Ameer Ali သည်ပရီဗီကောင်စီအဖွဲ့ဝင်အဖြစ်မည်သည့်အချိန်ကစတင်ထမ်းဆောင်ခဲ့သည်မသိရပါ။

၁၉၂၄ ခုနှစ်၊ဩဂုတ်လ ၇ ရက်နေ့၌ချမှတ်သော 2 Ran 693 ( P C ) စီရင်ချက်ကို Mr. Justice Ameer Ali ရေးခဲ့သည်။

မြန်မာဩရသသားအကြောင်းရေးသည့်စီရင်ချက်ဖြစ်သည်။

၎င်းသည်အိန္ဒိယနိုင်ငံသားဖြစ်သဖြင့်အင်္ဂလိပ်လူမျိုးများကြီးစိုးသောပရီဗီကောင်စီတွင်ထိုစဉ်ကအိန္ဒိယနိုင်ငံ၏ပြည်နယ်တခုဖြစ်သောမြန်မာပြည်အကြောင်းကိုပိုမိုသိကျွမ်းသည်ဟုယူဆ၍လားမသိ၊ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာတရားဥပဒေနှင့်သက်ဆိုင်သောမှုခင်းများတွင် Mr. Justice Ameer Ali စီရင်ချက်ရေးရပုံပေါ်သည်။

5 Ran 175 ( P C ) စီရင်ထုံးကိုလည်းကြည့်ပါ။

ဒုတိယမြောက်မြန်မာတရားဝန်ကြီးဦးမေအောင်သည်တရားလွှတ်တော်တွင် ၂ နှစ်ခန့်သာတာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်ခဲ့သည်။

သက်ပြည့်တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်ခဲ့ရလျှင်တရားဝန်ကြီးချုပ်အဖြစ်ထမ်းဆောင်ခွင့်ရမည့်ပုဂ္ဂိုလ်ဖြစ်သည်။

အငြိမ်းစားယူပြီးနောက် Mr. Justice Ameer Ali ကဲ့သို့ပရီဗီကောင်စီတွင်အဖွဲ့ဝင်ဖြစ်လောက်အောင်ဥပဒေပညာအရည်အချင်းရှိသူလည်းဖြစ်သည်။

တရားလွှတ်တော်တရားဝန်ကြီးအဖြစ်နှစ်နှစ်ခန့်ထမ်းဆောင်ပြီးနောက်၊ကျပ်ငါးထောင်စားပြည်ထဲရေးဝန်ကြီးအဖြစ်ပြောင်းလဲတာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်ဆဲမှာပင်ကွယ်လွန်သွားရှာသည်ဟုကြားသိရပါသည်။

စာရေးသူသည်မျက်မှောက်ခေတ်ဥပဒေပညာရှင်များအားအကျော်အမော်ဥပဒေပညာရှင်များအကြောင်းသိစေလိုသဖြင့်ဗဟုသုတအဖြစ်တစေ့တစောင်းဖော်ပြရခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။

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DIGEST OF CASES, Column 152 ၌၊အောက်ပါအတိုင်းပြဆိုသည်-

[ 1.-s 102.— Dismissal of suit for non-appearance of plaintiff — Application under s. 103 to set aside order of dismissal-Appearance, What amounts to Ex-parte decree.]

When the plaintiff's suit came on for hearing his Counsel applied for a postponement. 

This application was refused, and the plaintiff's Counsel, not being further instructed, left the Court.

The suit was then dismissed for want of prosecution. 

Subsequently the plaintff made an application under s. 103 of the Civil Procedure Code (Act XIV of 1882) for an order to set the dismissal aside:-

Held, refusing the application, that the above circumstances amounted to an appearance on the part of the plaintiff.

RAMPERTAB MULL  v. JAKEERAM AGURWALLAH.

23 Calc. 991 ]

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Satish Chandra Mukerjee 

                 vs 

Ahara Prasad Mukerjee 

on 30 January, 1907

Equivalent citations: (1907)ILR 34CAL403

JUDGMENT

Rampini, J.

အမှုသည်၊တရားသူကြီးချုပ် Maclean, C.J. အခြားတရားသူကြီးများဖြစ်ကြသော Rampini, J., Mookerjee J., Harington, J., Brett, J., Mitra, J., Geidt, J. တို့ပါဝင်သောစုံညီခုံရုံးဖြင့်စီရင်ဆုံးဖြတ်သောအမှုဖြစ်သည်။

အမှု၌တရားသူကြီး Rampini, J. ကစုံညီခုံရုံးဖြင့်စီရင်ဆုံးဖြတ်ရန်ဥပဒေပြဿနာနှစ်ရပ်ကိုစီရင်ချက်အပိုဒ် ၇ တွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းဖော်ပြသည်-

[ 7. There is this difference between the two cases, that in the former case the application for restoration was made under Section 558, and in the latter under Section 108. 

But there would seem to be no difference in principle between the two cases. 

In both cases the question is whether an appearance by a counsel or pleader instructed to apply only for an adjournment is an appearance within the meaning of the Code, and whether in such a case the suit or appeal can be dismissed for default. 

The two cases are in conflict, and we are constrained to refer this appeal to a Full Bench, and to submit for their decision the following questions, viz.

(i) Whether an application by a counsel or pleader, who is instructed. only to apply for an adjournment, which is refused, is an appearance within the meaning of the Code, and when in such circumstances an appeal is dismissed, whether the dismissal is one for default under Section 556, so as to entitle the appellant to apply for re-admission under Section 568 of the Civil Procedure Code.

(ii) Whether the case of Watson v. Ambika Dasi (1899) 4 C.W.N. 237 has been rightly decided. ]

စီရင်ချက်အပိုဒ် ၈ နှင့် ၉ တွင်၎င်း၏အမြင်နှင့်ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်ကိုအောက်ပါအတိုင်းဖော်ပြသည်-

[ 8. I would add that I was a member of the Bench that decided the case above referred to. 

The difficulty that presented itself to me in that case was that it seemed anomalous that an application for a postponement should, if allowed, be held to be an appearance; whereas, if refused, it should not be an appearance. 

Further, if it be argued that in the latter case the appearance ceased to be an appearance, when the counsel or pleader declined to go on with the case or left the court, the same would have to be held when the pleader or counsel having partially pleaded his case, finding the Court against him, left the Court without finishing his argument. 

In such a case it would be undesirable that the Court should be compelled to proceed ex parte or dismiss the appeal for default.

9. In the face, however, of the numerous rulings of this and other High Courts adverse to the rule laid down in Ram Chandra Pandurang v. Madhav Purushuitom (1891) I.L.R. 16 Bom. 23 and Watson v. Ambika Dasi (1899) 4 C.W.N. 237, and being impressed with the desirability of uniformity in the rulings of this Court, I do not wish to press my views further, but I am prepared to concur with my learned brother in answering the first part of the first questioned the second question above propounded in the negative, and the second part of the first question in the affirmative. ]

အခြားတရားသူကြီး Mookerjee J. က၎င်း၏အမြင်နှင့်ဝေဖန်ချက်ကိုစီရင်ချက်အပိုဒ် ၁၀ မှ ၃၁ အထိဖော်ပြရေးသားသည်။

Mookerjee J. ကစီရင်ချက်အပိုဒ် ၁၀ မှ ၁၂ တွင်၎င်း၏အမြင်ကိုအောက်ပါအတိုင်းဖော်ပြသည်-

[ 10. I agree that the questions stated in the opinion recorded by my learned brother should be referred for decision to a Full Bench. 

As the questions ate of some importance, and as the matter has been exhaustively argued by the learned vakils on both sides, I shall examine the various authorities on the subject, and indicate the view which I am disposed to take.

11. The appellant before us was the appellant in an Appeal from Original Decree in the Court of the District Judge of Birbhum. 

The appeal was set down for hearing on the 22nd August 1905. 

He alleges that on that date both the pleaders engaged by him to argue the appeal were absent from Court; he consequently engaged a new pleader, and, as it would take some time to explain the case to him, instructed him to apply for an adjournment. The application was made and refused. 

The pleader thereupon stated to the Court that he was unable to argue the appeal, and as the appellant himself was not present, the appeal was dismissed with costs. 

On the 19th September, the appellant made an application, which purported to be one under Section 558 of the Civil Procedure Code, for re-admission of the appeal. 

Objection was then taken on behalf of the respondent, that as the pleader for the appellant had appeared and asked for time, the Court had no jurisdiction under Section 558 of the Civil Procedure Code, to readmit the appeal. 

Upon the authority of the case of Watson v. Ambika Dasi (1899) 4 C.W.N. 237, the District Judge held that this objection was well founded, and dismissed the application without any investigation of the merits. 

The validity of this order is called in question in the appeal presented to this Court, and it is argued that the District Judge has refused to exercise the jurisdiction vested in him under Section 558 of the Civil Procedure Code. 

As there has been no investigation into the merits by the Court below, we have to assume, for the decision of the question of jurisdiction, that the allegations made by the appellant are true. 

As stated in the opinion of my learned brother, there has been some divergence of judicial opinion upon the matter; but before I refer to the cases on the subject, it is desirable to examine the provisions of the Code, which bear upon the question.

12. Section 556 of the Civil Procedure Code provides that, if on the day fixed for hearing the appeal, or any other day to which the hearing may be adjourned, the appellant does not attend in person, or by his pleader, the appeal shall be dismissed for default; and it is also provided that, if the appellant attends and the respondent does not attend, the appeal shall be heard ex parte in his absence.

Section 558 of the Civil Procedure Code then provides that in the case of a dismissal under Section 556 of the Civil Procedure Code, the appellant may apply for re-admission, and if it be proved that he was prevented by any sufficient cause from attending, when the appeal was called on for hearing, the Court may re-admit the appeal on terms. 

Similar provisions are to be found in Sections 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 108 and 157 of the Civil Procedure Code; the language used is, however, slightly different, as in these Sections the term used is "appear" and not "attend"; but it is difficult to see that there is any substantial difference in principle between these sections, and the cases upon these sections, to which I shall presently refer, do not support any distinction on this ground. ]

Mookerjee J. ကစီရင်ချက်အပိုဒ် ၁၆ တွင် VOL XXIII. CALCUTTA SERIES. 991 ( 998 ) စီရင်ထုံးကိုရည်ညွှန်း၍အောက်ပါအတိုင်းဖော်ပြသည်-

[ 16. The case of Ram Pertab Mull v. Jakeeram (1896) I.L.R. 23 Calc. 991, Which was decided by Mr, Justice Ameer Ali, appears to me to support the position, that a dismissal, under circumstances similar to those stated before, amounts to dismissal for default. 

The passage at page 995 of the Report perhaps indicates that the learned Judge-had doubts upon the matter, but, after stating that the plaintiff was present, had instructed counsel to apply for adjournment, and upon refusal of the application, took no further steps, he proceeded to observe as follows:--"It is by no means clear that the plaintiff has brought himself within; the provisions of Section 102 of the Code; but having regard to the wide terms in which Sections 102 and 103 of the Civil Procedure Code, are couched, I am not prepared to hold that the applications do not come within Section 103." 

The learned Judge then proceeded to consider whether, assuming that the applications came within Section 103 of the Civil Procedure Code, sufficient cause had been made out for the alleged non-appearance. 

He came to the conclusion that in the case of three out of the four applications, no grounds had been established for setting aside the order of dismissal, whereas in the other case sufficient cause had been made out.

He, therefore, dismissed three of the applications, allowed the fourth application, and directed that the suit, in which it had been made, be re-heard. 

It appears dear, therefore, that the statement contained in the head-note to the report of the case is not accurate. ]

တရားသူကြီးချုပ် Maclean, C.J. က၎င်း၏အမြင်နှင့်ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်ကိုစီရင်ချက်အပိုဒ် ၃၂ မှ ၃၇ အထိရေးသားဖော်ပြသည်-

[ 32. I entertain no doubt as to the manner in which the question submitted to us ought to be answered. 

I was a party to the decision in which we dealt with this question in the case of Cook v. The Equitable Coal Co. (1904) 8 C.W.N. 621. 

Nothing I have heard this morning induces me to resile from the view then expressed. 

All the authorities upon the matter have been very carefully collected and dealt with by one of the learned Judges, who made the present reference, and his opinion, in fact the opinion of both the referring Judges, is in support of the view I am now about to express.

33. The first question is "whether an application by a counsel or pleader, who is instructed only to apply for an adjournment, which is refused, is an appearance within the meaning of the Code?" 

The language of Section 556 is "attend" and not "appear," but for present purposes I think the terms are practically synonymous. 

I answer that question in the negative.

34. The second question is "where in such circumstances an appeal is dismissed, whether the dismissal is one for default under Section 556 so as to entitle the appellant to apply for readmission under Section 558 of the Civil Procedure Code?" I answer that question in the affirmative.

35. The last question is "whether the case of Watson & Co. v. Ambika Dasi (1899) 4 C.W.N. 237 has been rightly decided." I answer that question in the negative.

36. "We must send the case back to the referrin Bench with this expression of our opinion.

37. The appellant will have the costs of this hearing before the Full Bench. ]

အခြားတရားသူကြီး Harington, J. က၎င်း၏ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်ကိုစီရင်ချက်အပိုဒ် ၃၈ တွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းရေးသားဖော်ပြသည်-

[ Harington, J. 

38. I agree. I do not see how a pleader can be said to attend at the hearing, merely because, before the hearing begins, he comes and asks the Court that there may be no hearing. 

The hearing does not begin till his application is disposed of. ]

အခြားတရားသူကြီး Brett, J.ကတရားသူကြီးချုပ်၏အမြင်ကိုသဘောတူကြောင်းစီရင်ချက်အပိုဒ် ၃၉ တွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းရေးသားဖော်ပြသည်-

[ Brett, J.

39. I agree in answering the questions in the manner laid down by the learned Chief Justice. ]

အခြားတရားသူကြီးများဖြစ်ကြသော Mitra, J. နှင့် Geidt, J. တို့၏သဘောတူညီမှုကိုစီရင်ချက်အပိုဒ် ၄၀ နှင့် ၄၁ တွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းဖော်ပြသည်-

[ Mitra, J.

40. I also agree.

Geidt, J.

41. I also agree. ]

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