A. RAMACHANDRA NAIDU Vs. KANDASWAMI MUDALIAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE facts are briefly these. The plaintiff, whose father and brothers are alive, brought a suit against the defendant, a village munsiff, for recovering Rs. 2,000 as damages consisting of Rs. 500, the estimated damages to sugarcane crop during the period of its attachment by the village munsiff for non -payment of kist, and Rs. 1,500, damages for personal reputation and mental suffering of the plaintiff caused by the attachment. The suit itself was filed in 1946, the attachment in question having been effected in April, 1945, and having ceased about May 1945. The plaintiff filed an amendment petition on 26th July, 1947, praying to amend the plaint by describing himself as the manager of the joint family consisting of himself, his father and brothers instead of the suit being brought only in his own personal capacity as plaintiff. The learned District Munsiff dismissed the amendment petition, holding that, if the amendment were allowed, it would amount to allowing a suit by the manager of the joint family which would have become normally barred in May 1947, to be filed on 26th July, 1947, and kept alive illegally. This petition is against that dismissal.

(2.) THE lower Court committed no error in law in dismissing the petition. The learned Counsel for the petitioner urged that really a suit by a person like the plaintiff, who happened to be the manager of the joint family at the time he filed the suit, would be a suit filed by him as manager, whether he described himself like that or not, as in the ordinary case of a Hindu family manager suing on a promissory note or even on a sale deed, that no question of limitation, or a fresh cause of action, would arise, and that the plaintiff's only intention in filing the amendment petition was to describe himself more fully and correctly, and to have an issue framed regarding his being the family manager or not on the date of the suit, and not to enlarge the scope of the claim in the suit or to defeat any limitation right accruing to the defendant. The short answer to this is, that if there was nothing else intended by the plaintiff by the amendment than to describe himself more fully and correctly, he can do so even in his own deposition, and I do not apprehend that the lower Court will prevent him from describing himself as he pleases subject to cross -examination. So, the amendment is virtually unnecessary, in that view. But my own feeling is that the real idea behind the amendment is to prevent the defendant from contending that the plaintiff had no right to sue, he being not the pattadar or the joint family manager, and that even if he had a right to sue, his damages, if any, would be restricted to the damages of one co -parcener among many. It was urged by the learned Counsel for the petitioner that the plaintiff did not dream of asking for a pie more than the damages of Rs. 2,000 which he had originally asked for. Here again we must remember that an enlargement of the scope of a plaint need not necessarily mean asking for more, and that retaining what one has asked for, when one will be entitled to less, will also amount to an enlargement.