PONNAMMAL Vs. ANDI AYYAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal from the decision of the learned second Judge of Nagercoil denying maintenance to the first and second plaintiffs in O. S. No. 162 of 1122. That decision is based on the findings: (1) that the marriage which admittedly took place between the first plaintiff and the first defendant on 16-11-1118 was void because of the pregnancy of the first plaintiff at the time of the marriage; and (2) that the second plaintiff, the daughter that was born as the result of that pregnancy, on or immediately after 15-7-1119 was not the child of the first defendant.

(2.) ACCORDING to the lower court the interval between the marriage and the delivery was too short for the first defendant to be the father of the second plaintiff and that forms the main foundation of the two findings mentioned above.

(3.) THE last of the passages cited above was quoted with approval in Clark v. Clark , (1939) 2 All. E. R. 59, a remarkable case in which a child born after a foetal life of 174 days survived her birth and was alive some three years later, at the time the judgment was pronounced.