NOWROJI HORMASJI PATHAK Vs. SHRINIVAS V PRABHU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff filed this suit in the Small Causes Court to eject his tenants (the defendants) from certain shops in Lamington Road belonging to him which he wished to use for his own purposes. The plaintiff had previously rented certain premises in Hornby Road the floor space of which was 2000 square feat. He had to vacate these premises and consequently he wanted to occupy his own premises in order to store his goods and expose them for sale. It is not suggested that he is asking the Court to eject the defendants from a greater space than the space he occupied in the premises he rented in the Hornby Road. But the learned Judge considered that it was for him to decide how the plaintiff s business should be carried on and what amount of space in the plaintiff s premises would be adequate for that purpose. He thought that it would not be profitable to the plaintiff if he occupied the whole of the premises, and so he ordered that the plaintiff should only get possession of a part, as it might take time to accustom the population of that locality to purchase the kind of goods which the plaintiff was selling. As a result he held that the space which was occupied by the defendants in this suit was not reasonably required for the plaintiff s use.

(2.) Now we do not say that there may be cases in which if a plaintiff doing business in rented premises on a small scale wanted to occupy premises of his own which were far larger than those rented by him, the Court would not have power to decide that the plaintiff was asking for more space than was reasonably required. But in this case the plaintiff is not asking for more space than he had previously been in occupation of for the purpose of his business. It is true he had to move from one part of the city to another. But in our opinion the plaintiff was the person to decide whether he should occupy as much or less space for his business in his own premises. There was nothing unreasonable in his thinking that the goods which he had stored in the premises in Hornby Road could with equal advantage be stored in the premises in Lamington Road. If he had been asking the Court to give him an ejectment order against tenants occupying a far greater space than he had occupied in the rented premises, then no doubt it might have been a different matter. It seems to us that to prevent the plaintiff from occupying a space in his own premises equal to the space previously rented by him on the ground stated by the learned Judge would be going entirely beyond the jurisdiction of the Court in cases falling under the Bent Act We make the rule absolute.

(3.) There will be a decree for possession within one month of the service of this order on the occupants of the shop with costs throughout.