V P PERIAKARUPPAN Vs. P MAYALAGAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) BOTH these revision proceedings involve only one short ground, in two suits on a negotiable instrument, all the pleas upon which the executants resisted the decrees of the suits have been negatived on the merits. But, in each of these two suits, the same plaintiff sues under an assignment in his favour, constituting him as an agent for collection, even on a minimal interpretation. It is claimed that the principal was alive, at least when one of the two suits was filed, and the learned counsel for the revision petitioner claims that the principal was alive on the date of institution of both the suits.

(2.) HOWEVER that might be, the principal died shortly thereafter. The suits have been dismissed, though they were otherwise entirely justified on the merits of the findings, on the short point that the agency for collection having come to an end with the death of the principal, the suits were no longer maintainable.

(3.) IN my view, this is a quite erroneous conception of the respective legal rights of the parties. So long as there is an endorsement of assignment in favour of the plaintiff in each case, the plaintiff can claim to be a holder in due course, ex facie. It is not in dispute that the suit is perfectly maintainable, if it is instituted when the principal was alive, as is actually claimed. The decision relied upon by learned counsel for the respondent in Subrarnanian Chetty v. Alagappa Chetty, (1907) 17 mad LJ 414, a judgment of Benson and Wallis, JJ. , does not at all help to advance the contention that, with the death of the principal, the suits themselves are extinguished. All that this decision states is that, as between the endorser and the endorsee, the endorsement for collection simplidter does not pass the property in the bill to the endorsee. Again when the suit was validly instituted on the date when it was instituted, I am quite unable to see how it can be dismissed because of a subsequent event, such as the death of the principal, which does not affect the substance of the claim.