GOPALA MENON Vs. SIVARAMA MENON

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The first defendant in a suit for setting aside an earlier partition and for a re-partition is the appellant and some of the defendants the contesting respondents. The plaintiff, whose suit was decreed by the Trial Court and who contested the appeal by the first defendant before the lower appellate court, has filed C. M. P. No. 539 of 1966 along with the appellant compromising and withdrawing the suit. Therefore, the other defendants, who sailed with the plaintiff before the lower courts, are the contesting respondents before me.

(2.) The suit properties belonged to the tarwad of the parties. The second defendant is the mother, the first defendant her eldest son by the first marriage, defendants 3 to. 8 her children by the second marriage and defendants 9 to 13 the children of the eighth defendant. The first defendant brought O. S. No. 117 of 1955 for partition and separate possession of his share. Pending suit one of his brothers by name Narayanankutty died; and thereafter, a petition, Ex. D-3, was filed on 29th August 1955 compromising the suit. The plaintiff was shown as a minor in Ex. D-3. The plaintiff is said to have attained majority on 20th August 1956; and the case of the plaintiff was that since at the time of the compromise decree he was a major, the said decree would not bind him, as he was not shown as a major and he did not sign the compromise. The further contention of the plaintiff was that in the allotment of shares to the first defendant also there was inequity, because the first defendant was given a larger share and that even free from any liability for paying the tarwad debts. There was yet another contention that in compromising the suit the first defendant played fraud on the second defendant, the mother of the plaintiff, who was an illiterate woman, when she was in bereavement.

(3.) All these contentions were found by both the lower courts; and the lower courts decreed the suit.